Hemingway by Michael Reynolds

Author:Michael Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2012-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

DOWN AMONG

THE DEAD MEN

September to November 1944

A SMALL BUT WELL-ARMED Hemingway convoy—two cars, two jeeps, and a motorcycle—left Paris the morning of September 7 with Archie Pelkey once more assigned as Ernest’s driver. With them were three of the remaining FFI men, one Army officer, and two other correspondents, all en route to rejoin Lanham’s 22nd Infantry Regiment for the push into Germany. The rest of September was a blur of road blocks, blown tires, friendly villagers, and retreating Germans. That Hemingway’s convoy came unscathed through minefields, dangerous crossroads, and the possibility of German ambush is a matter of sound maps, good fortune, and battle-tested judgment. As they reached the Belgian border, Germans were counterattacking a few kilometers ahead at Paliseul, leaving ten Americans dead and twenty-three wounded. Ernest is warned to expect increased ambushes and traps, for Germans with captured American battle plans are trying to get their retreating troops and artillery safely behind the vaunted Siegfried Line of defense. Before sleeping that night, Ernest writes Mary, professing his love, wishing her good luck, and hoping that he is not in too much trouble, for he knows that disgruntled journalists have filed charges accusing him of carrying and using weapons at Rambouillet. If a full-blown court-martial results, he could be stripped of his correspondent’s credentials and summarily sent back to Cuba.1 When Ernest wakes in the night to a mortar’s cough, he writes Mary that he thinks of Tom Welsh’s lovely daughter, the look, touch, and feel of her. His almost daily letters are ardent and insistent, increasingly so, as he re-creates the paper passion of earlier separations from his previous muses—Hadley, Pauline, and Martha. Since meeting Mary in London, he has forgotten Martha except when drinking enough to bring out his wicked tongue. Once again he is living by his own rules of behavior, rules he will soon be calling tribal.

On September 9, Lanham’s forward command post was situated on a hillside overlooking the Belgian town of Houffalize; the 22nd’s tank destroyers were picking off retreating German armored vehicles as they crossed the town’s bridge toward Liège. German artillery, in turn, was laying down protective fire on the approaches into the village. In the woods to the left, one of the 22nd’s tank destroyers hits a mine: two men are wounded. On a foolish bet as to who can reach the village center first, Lanham and Hemingway depart on separate routes: Ernest, with Pelkey driving, follows another jeep of FFI men down the main road; Lanham’s group takes a back route following a goat path. Delayed by a series of felled and booby-trapped trees blocking the road, Hemingway’s group divides, Ernest and Pelkey going one way, the FFI jeep another. By the time Ernest arrives, the Germans have blown the bridge and Lanham is staring across the swift stream at the retreating enemy. He and Ernest, perched on a fence, survey the situation. It will be nightfall before his engineers arrive to repair the bridge, and Lanham is not going to advance on foot without his armored support.

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