Influencing Hemingway by Nancy W. Sindelar

Author:Nancy W. Sindelar [Sindelar, Nancy W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2014-12-30T05:00:00+00:00

Ernest and Martha Gellhorn Hemingway on their “working honeymoon” in China, 1941. Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Library

Ernest and Martha Hemingway with Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Chung King, China, 1941. Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

The working honeymoon met Ernest’s needs for sleuthing and intelligence gathering and Martha’s need to see the Asia she only had read about. However, a major difference between the newly married couple surfaced during the trip. Ernest accepted the poverty and squalor of China; Martha was appalled by it. Trying to stay clean, Martha bathed and brushed her teeth in the local water. As a result, her hands became infected with “China rot,” a highly contagious fungus. The incident initiated a pattern of Ernest’s annoyance with Martha’s habits of cleanliness. He responded to the situation by saying, “Honest to God Martha, You brought this on yourself. I told you not to wash.”21

When they returned to Cuba, Martha flew to London to cover World War II for Collier’s and began a series of events where much of their married life was spent apart. Though Martha started the restoration of Finca Vigia, was a good stepmother to Ernest’s three sons, and played the role of Mrs. Hemingway while in Cuba, she also was an avid journalist and preferred life on the road. As World War II continued to escalate, Martha pursued assignments in Europe for Collier’s. When she was unable to gain accreditation as a war correspondent in a military zone, she took a Collier’s assignment to report on German naval activity in the Caribbean while Ernest was in Cuba pursuing counterintelligence activities and patrolling the local waters for German U-boats.

Ernest’s newest series of adventures came about because the American ambassador to Cuba, Spruille Braden, had become concerned about the loyalties of the three hundred thousand Spaniards living in Cuba. If Franco’s Spain joined the Axis powers, which side of the war would the Cuban Spaniards support? Given Cuba’s proximity to the United States, and its history of revolution, Braden decided to recruit Ernest for counterintelligence activities. He asked him to report on the actions and any sabotage attempts of the pro-Nazi Falange, which was threatening to U.S. interests. Ernest eagerly accepted the assignment and recruited a bizarre group of “secret agents,” and the “Crook Factory” was born.

Later when German submarines were discovered in the Gulf of Mexico, Ernest was granted permission to use the Pilar for coastal patrol and investigative work on the south coast of Cuba. He transformed the Pilar into a spy ship camouflaged as a marine research vessel. The Pilar carried bazookas, explosives, machine guns, and radio equipment. Ernest hoped the Pilar would be halted by a German sub so the Pilar crew could attack the German crew with machine-gun fire and destroy the sub with blasts from bazookas and by throwing hand grenades down the conning tower. Though Ernest never carried out the plan, and Martha saw it as a mere ploy to get more rationed gasoline for

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