Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) wrote fictional works that included realities from his life. Events in his stories may be made up, but he was always familiar with the situations and settings in which his characters lived. Hemingway grew up in the sheltered American heartland. He wrote short stories and articles for his high school newspaper and graduated in 1917, just two months after America entered World War I.

He had already decided to become a writer and believed a job as a journalist would be more valuable than going to college. By October, he was working as a cub reporter at the highly respected Kansas City Star. Reporters there were taught to write in the clean, crisp, no-nonsense style that became characteristic of his later writing.

Even though Hemingway was too young to join the army, he was determined to experience the war. He found an opening to volunteer as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross in Italy, and he reported for duty in Milan in the spring of 1918. Two weeks before turning 19 in July, he was passing out candy bars to soldiers at the front when he was hit with metal fragments from a mortar shell.