by Earl Mcgill

Created on: August 27, 2009   Last Updated: August 28, 2009

More, articles, memoirs and biographies have been written about Ernest Hemingway than any other American writer. Most of his work is still in print and sales of his books prove that he remains a powerful literary force. Yet in spite of Hemingway's universal and timeless popularity, the man has been the subject of an increasing number of attacks by contemporary critics more interested in authors' lives than in the quality of their writing. By exploiting Hemingway's negative qualities, the man who literally changed everything about writing has been transformed from brilliant writer to macho, alcoholic womanizer who loved killing animals and eventually ended his own life.

What is missing from this picture is the Hemingway who proved his remarkable courage and fortitude in three wars. To really "investigate" Hemingway, we should study the articles and dispatches he wrote while on his way to penning the novels that will live in immortality. Many of these short writings are contained in a book titled, By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, edited by William White - a book that should be read by anyone who is genuinely interested in "investigating" Hemingway.

For example, in this book we learn that Hemingway was with the troops at Normandy on D-Day.

In "Voyage to Victory," he wrote: "No one remembers the date of the battle of Shiloh. But the day we took Fox Green beach was the sixth of June, and the wind was blowing hard out of the northwest. As we moved in toward land in the gray early light, the 36-foot coffin-shaped steel boats took solid green sheets of water that fell on the helmeted heads of the troops packed shoulder to shoulder in the stiff, awkward, uncomfortable, lonely companionship of men going to a battle. There were cases of TNT, with rubber- tube life preservers wrapped around them to float them in the surf, stacked forward in the steel well of the LCV (P), and there were piles of bazookas and boxes of bazooka rockets encased in waterproof coverings that reminded you of the transparent raincoats college girls wear."

Imagery at its best, juxtaposed against one of the truly awesome moments in history, the D-Day invasion of Hitler's fortress Europe, and certainly one of the best, most objective pieces of war writing ever published. .

To write another stellar piece, "London Fights the Robots," Hemingway flew along on intercept and bombing missions against V-1 missiles and their launch sites. Explaining his role in these extremely hazardous and perhaps foolhardy (for a civilian correspondent) missions, Hemingway wrote of himself: "He is not a man who has a perpetual urge to see peril in the sky or to defy the laws of gravity; he is simply a man who, not understanding very well the nature of the propositions offered over the telephone due to faulty earwork, constantly finds himself involved in the destruction of these monsters in their hellish lairs or in attempts at interception in that fine, 400 mile-an-hour airplane, the Mosquito."

There are few novels better than Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea or his short story, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." These are among Hemingway's more familiar classics, all of them defining male honor - a human element largely missing from contemporary American literature and without which we might still be rubbing sticks to make fire. Perhaps it is time to actually "investigate" Hemingway to find out what the man was really like. The best way is to actually read what he wrote on his way to establishing a legacy that will live alongside Shakespeare's.

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