"'Drive,' he said": how Ted Brumback helped steer Ernest Hemingway into war and writing.

Ernest Hemingway's apprenticeship at The Kansas City Star gave him writing skills and a few lasting friendships. One friend, Theodore B. Brumback, has long been recognized for his contributions to Hemingway's life story. When they met in November 1917, Brumback had just returned to Kansas City after five months driving ambulances in France. A few months later, he and Hemingway left the newspaper together to join the ambulance service in Italy. For information about the friendship, Hemingway scholars have long relied on a colorful story Brumback published in The Star in 1936. But Brumback left a longer paper trail, including accounts of his wartime service published in 1917-18. These pieces offer a new perspective on Brumback's influence on Hemingway.

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A MONTH AFTER HE BEGAN WORKING at The Kansas City Star in 1917, Ernest Hemingway befriended a new arrival in the newsroom, a man who would help steer his course in the coming months. Theodore B. Brumback, four years older, had just returned to Kansas City after five months driving an ambulance in the war zones of France. Hemingway and Brumback would share many things in common over the years--including tough, life-changing experiences. But at the moment, the 18-year-old Hemingway was typing furiously. His keys jammed but he plowed right through it. And soon he called the copy boy to deliver his fresh story to the city desk (Brumback, "With Hemingway"; Fenton 47-48).

"That's rotten looking copy," Hemingway, a seasoned newsman now with four weeks of gritty city life under his belt, told Brumback. "When I get a little excited this damn type mill goes haywire on me." Hemingway stood up and offered his hand (Brumback "With Hemingway"; Fenton 47-48).

Brumback was twenty-two, a tall scion of Kansas City society. His father was a judge. He'd spent three years at Cornell and dropped out after an errant golf ball bounced off a tree and back into his face. He wore a glass eye. The wound didn't seem to suppress his spirit.

Brumback was supposed to be home on a month's furlough. Although previous accounts suggest that Brumback had joined the newspaper's staff, it's possible, as one contemporary recalled it, that his first encounter with Hemingway was in an interview (Wilson). (1) On 17 November 1917, the day of Brumback's return, The Star published a front-page story--"Brumback Home From France/ A Short Furlough After Five Months in Ambulance Service." Hemingway may have been the author.

[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

If so, that single story would represent an intriguing addition to the body of Hemingway articles identified over the years from his six-and-a-half months at The Star. Even if Hemingway was not the author, the story has importance as one of several previously unacknowledged accounts of Brumback's ambulance service. In addition to this interview, Brumback's own narratives in The Star--including a published letter from the front, a luncheon speech, and a finely honed, 4,000word tale---could have influenced the young Hemingway as he imagined and went on to create his own future.

Brumback had gone to France in July 1917. He served in the No. 66 section of the American Field Service. The unit was stationed opposite German troops behind the Craonne sector, "one of the hottest fighting districts along the front," according to the interview. "There are three thousand Americans in the ambulance service," Brumback said. "The forty-four men in our section one day brought back fifteen hundred wounded men. We were seldom that busy, however, and sometimes for a day or two we would have practically no work" ("Brumback Home").

Brumback told the interviewer that the ambulance headquarters squatted along the Aisne River, about four miles back of the line. Guns could reach it easily. "Wounded men were hauled in motor ambulances about five miles" the article explained, "where other ambulances picked them up and carried them to base hospitals. In quiet times ambulance drivers work two days at the front, then spend four days in the rear. During an attack they work continuously" ("Brumback Home"). The story ended with an inventory of Brumback's souvenirs: "a hand grenade, a trench bomb and several pieces of shrapnel, one of which fell in his ambulance" ("Brumback Home"). Two days later, the newspaper followed up with one-column line cuts of Brumback and the seven-inch bomb (shown at "Two-Thirds Actual Size") ("'Ted' Brumback and a Trench Bomb").

In addition to that front page story and the illustrated follow-up in November, at least three more accounts of Brumback's wartime experience in France appeared in The Kansas City Star in 1917 and 1918. These early newspaper pieces, published during the heat of the war and during Hemingway's apprenticeship in Kansas City, offer an opportunity to see something new about the fertile ground from which Hemingway the writer sprouted.

In light of the older man's influence on the budding writer, each of the Brumback stories is worth considering at length. You can hear Brumback's voice in these articles, the diction of his tales as he talks about fear and bombs and the duty of hauling the wounded while artillery shells whiz by. Brumback's stories may have influenced Hemingway years later as he wrote about the war in "Now I Lay Me," "In Another Country," and A Farewell to Arms. And his one-eyed friend may have been an early model for Hemingway's wounded heroes.

Brumback almost certainly helped shape Hemingway's attitude toward his future. When they first met, Hemingway was already eager to go to war somehow, some way. "Honest kid I cant stay out much longer," he told his sister Marcelline in a letter written on 6 November 1917, just three weeks after his arrival in Kansas City and less than two weeks before his first encounter with Brumback (qtd. in Sanford 270-271). Within months the two young men would head out together to drive ambulances (or pitch canteen cigarettes) in Italy. For now, Hemingway could absorb from Brumback an idea of the physical routines and dangers, and an understanding of war as a subject to observe and write about with spark and detail.

Brumback's first narrative had appeared in The Starback in August 1917, while Hemingway was summering in Michigan and still trying to decide what to do in the fall. Brumback had written a long and vivid letter to his father, who submitted it to the newspaper. (2)

The Germans, Brumback wrote, had been attacking the California Plateau and bombing the communications roads to the trenches. "It being our duty to pass along these roads," he wrote, "we have all been through hell. Two of our men were killed and three others received the croix-de-guerre" ("Ted Brumback Under Fire").

Most of the letter delivered his account of the worst, "most frightful" night of the bombing on July 25--more "marmites" fell behind the lines than at Verdun, a French officer told him. It all started quietly in late afternoon, but before long, Brumback and his partner were sent up to a dangerous post known as "the black village." After sitting around and gazing down at the valley through which they had just journeyed over a rutted, winding road, Brumback and the rest of the camp learned of a coming German attack. "Naturally," Brumback wrote, "we felt greatly excited and exhilarated at the prospect of some real excitement":

      At 7 o'clock hell broke loose. The sight was grand and
   terrifying. Over our heads went shrieking shell after shell.
   They burst all along the little road which we had come along
   over an hour ago. One can soon get accustomed to the sound of
   the French guns firing and their "departs" whistling overhead,
   but no one ever can steel himself not to flinch when a big
   "arrive" lights close. The noise and shock are simply appalling.

      How anyone in the valley lived through the storm of shells only
   God knows. But the brave French artillerymen stuck to "their posts
   and returned the German fire shot for shot and even more. My
   eardrums felt like they were going to burst. The windshield on our
   car just outside was shattered soon by the disrupted air. Every now
   and then  a big shell would light outside the abri, and the hot
   "eclats" would come in through the door. Needless to say. I was
   well away from the door. ("Ted Brumback Under Fire")

The bombing lasted more than an hour, and as it eased up the wounded began arriving. Brumback watched as medics dressed wounds and as the first two casualties died. His ambulance now loaded with seven patients, Brumback and his partner set out for the hospital over the shell-pocked road:

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We had gone only about twenty yards when a couple of big ones hit close. Each time I fell flat on my face in the middle of the road, and the "eclats" passed over my head, some even striking the car. When we had gone about fifteen minutes like this, I suddenly heard a terrific shriek over my head. I dropped immediately. A most terrific explosion followed and something hit me in the middle of the back and knocked my breath out. It was only a stone thrown up by the shell, but naturally I thought I was wounded. Several "eclats" passed through our car, which was about ten or twelve feet back of me. My partner, however, was uninjured but he believed I had been killed because I didn't answer him. I did not because I had no breath. When I got up I stumbled over the half truncated body of a man. He had been blown off a wagon at the side of the road. This wagon was all that saved us from a like fate. It stopped all the "eclats" coming in that direction. ("Ted Brumback Under Fire")

The road became an obstacle course. A fallen horse. Upturned French ammunition wagons. Car-swallowing holes every quarter of a mile. And the close "arrives" that jolted Brumback and his passengers every ten minutes. No sooner had the road improved, than they encountered gas. Brumback put on his mask but couldn't see to drive, so he took it off. They put masks on the wounded, but one already had died. Six survived the trip to the hospital. Two of his fellow ambulance drivers perished overnight, a big shell having burst next to their car.

A few days later Brumback was happy to wind down in peace and write his letter far from the artillery blasts and blood. "The baseball paraphernalia is being brought out" he wrote, "and we are astonishing rural France by running around like a bunch of wild men after a little ball." In the midst of writing his letter, Brumback went out with others to gather wood in a nearby forest. German prisoners loaded their car. One told Brumback he was happy to be a prisoner: "As far as he was concerned the war was over for him, and he was well content to remain and work in beautiful France." Brumback closed the letter to his father with a request--send chocolate, those 5-cent sacks of Prince Albert, and some cigarettes ("Ted Brumback Under Fire").

How many sons wrote such letters to their fathers from the war in Europe? Hemingway would do just that in the summer to come. Yet, few of those letter-writers, Brumback included, had the vision or the urgent drive to transform their experience into literature. It's conceivable that Brumback eventually shared that first Star clipping with his new friend. If so, then Hemingway, who went to Kansas City expressly to pursue the idea of becoming a writer, may have been stirred by Brumback's letter as much as any reader of The Star. And there would be more opportunities for Hemingway to gather the pieces of Brumback's vivid stories.

A week after his return to Kansas City, Brumback spoke to a luncheon gathering of his old colleagues in the real estate business. The Real Estate Board met at the stately Coates House hotel. The Star covered the event, and Hemingway could have read the story about his new friend in the next morning's paper. The excerpt of Brumback's talk included fewer specifics than he mustered in his August letter. Brumback mentioned how he had served three forward dressing stations, dugouts where doctors bandaged the wounded around the clock.

Often, he said, the nights reverberated with the overhead purr of an enemy plane or "the sharp, staccato bark of a machine gun." French soldiers, he said, preferred facing shells rather than airborne bombs, because they came at predictable intervals and could be more easily avoided. Brumback predicted that a wasteland of unexploded shells would outlast the war. And he lamented the razing of French villages, where houses were left to "rack and ruin," accumulating evidence of passing, weary soldiers: "old uniforms, frying pans, broken stretchers, tin hats, guns, bayonets--all sorts of discarded war paraphernalia" ("Fear the Aerial Bomb"). Brumback also commented on how the arrival of Americans shored up the French. If Hemingway had already heard the tale from Brumback in person, his "voice" if rather formal, would have seemed familiar in the paper:

"French officers told me that if the United States had not entered the war, France could not have held out much longer. War weary soldiers no longer care for the glory of fighting. But with America's entrance, the Frenchman is a changed man. He is again a fighter like those wonderful men who saved Paris on the Marne. He knows now that he has men and guns to back him up and that he will soon have his hard earned rest.

"Because France and her men look upon us as saviors we cannot afford to fail when we first go into the fight. For this reason I suppose the general staff is holding off our drive until spring. By that time our troops will all have had experience in the trenches, and by that time also we will have enough men over there to start something. The world is looking at us. It is now or never, and I am sure that France and England, one of these days, will join us in our own popular song, 'America, I Love You'" ("Fear the Aerial Bomb")

[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

It's unclear when Brumback joined the newsroom staff at The Star or what he reported on during Hemingway's time. When Brumback spoke to the Real Estate Board, the newspaper identified him as one Of the board's associate members, citing his prior employment at the J.C. Nichols Company. Brumback gave another civic lecture later that November, and the newspaper's tiny announcement did not mention an affiliation with The Star. But as the newsroom continued to lose men to the war effort, Brumback would've been welcomed as a reporter. Judging from another of his pieces, he was a pretty good one.

In February 1918, Brumback worked up another story of one long and terrifying night near the trenches in France--"Racing With Hun's Shells: An Experience Running a Car 'Over There' Described by an American Ambulance Driver' The previous accounts may have been mere rehearsals. But now Brumback dug deeper into his memory and delivered a 4,000-word opus. He must've consumed forty half-sheets or more of copy paper as he spun it through the type mill. The story was pure narrative, with a conversational tone and short, punchy sentences. The piece appeared deep in a features section of the Sunday paper--on the last editorial page of a special automotive section--not exactly prime real estate for a tale of its kind. Even so, Brumback earned something Hemingway never got at The Star, his initials--T.B.B.--at the end of the piece.

The story begins as the ambulance drivers' shift is changing. Brumback is sitting in his ambulance, asleep, when the call comes to head out. Six ambulances are lined up in the moonlight in a wasted French village filled with shattered slate roofs and sheltering wine cellars. It is 2:30 a.m. and Brumback is told that despite the quiet, the French expect a German bombing attack overnight. And, by the way, good luck. "Although this last was said with the best intentions, it grated on my nerves. I had heard stories about British soldiers who cursed anyone wishing them good luck just before they went into battle. I felt somewhat the same way" ("Racing with Hun's Shells"). Brumback rustles his partner, Tom Allen, from sleep, checks the gas tank, and "after two or three sputters and false starts" they draw "but of the square" into darkness and uncertainty. Soon, the night air is filled with searchlights:

"It's a boche plane, Tom whispered, and at same moment we caught the purr of a distant motor. Machine guns everywhere were now sending a storm of bullets skyward.

"Let's get out of here," I said, nervously, and the words were hardly out of my mouth before we heard a shrieking, banshee howl, followed immediately by an air-shattering explosion. "Bombs" Tom exclaimed, "and that one wasn't any too far away." "Just down the street," I said, pointing to the smoking ruins of a house across the way. In my excitement to get off I killed the motor by a too hurried start. "You idiot," Tom exclaimed, hoarsely. "Do you want to wake up with a wooden cross over you and somebody pattin' you in the face with a spade?"

He made several unsuccessful attempts to start the motor. "Let's run for shelter and wait till the raid's over," As I spoke the earth shook with a terrific explosion. I dived under the car, followed a close second by Tom.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Rocks and debris hit the top of the car. I ducked my head, coughing and choking, trying not to breathe the dust. Two more explosions followed in quick succession and then all was quiet.

"Are you all right, Tom?" I inquired, anxiously.

"Sure," came the cheery rejoinder. "But I'll bet the old 'bus is a heap of junk." He crawled from underneath and stood erect.

"Well, I'll be damned." He pointed to the driver's seat. Just where my head had been a few moments before was a jagged hole in the wooden body.

"And that's not all" he continued.

"How far do you think we can go with a hole clear through two cylinders?" (Racing with Hun's Shells")

While Tom Allen returns to the village to secure another vehicle, Brumback surveys the nearby damage--three-foot holes in the street, collapsed roofs, a ghastly vision of smoke arising from a blasted, deserted town. Later, on the road again, Brumback welcomes the moonlight and the quiet in the middle of the night. At a French dressing station, they pick up four wounded soldiers, one of whom is close to death and needs careful handling:"

      Swathed in bandages almost to his eyes I could catch a glimpse
   of the man's face, pale as death itself. Over him was thrown a
   light, white woolen blanket, stained a dark mottled red just over
   his chest. At his feet lay a blue overcoat with three gold bars on
   the sleeve. A captain. With the utmost gentleness he was lifted
   into the car. The other three were already in.

      We jumped into the driver's seat. It was Tom's turn to take the
   wheel. I was just stepping out in front to spin the engine over
   when there came to my ears that terrific whining drone, ominous and
   dreadful, that told of the approach of a shell. Instinctively I
   fell on my face in the road. With a hideous roar it passed
   overhead, exploding instantly some way down the road. I picked
   myself up only to fall flat again as another came over and burst in
   the same place. Two more followed in rapid succession and then hell
   seemed to open and let fly on us those unearthly, screeching
   devils. Swish, swish, roar, crump, announcing a big one, followed
   in unbelievably rapid succession.

      I heard Tom calling, "My God! The Germans have started their
   attack and we're caught in the barrage they are throwing on the
   support roads.... We've got to get out of here and be quick about
   it. Hear the poor devils moaning inside. They know what's going on
   and they know they'll all be killed if we keep the car here much
   longer" ("Racing With Hun's Shells")

Soon Allen is gunning it, and, though "death hovered on every side" Brumback notices the sky lightening and is thankful for the dawn. Bombs keep bursting far overhead, but Mien can see the road and thus avoid the holes. The dangerous crossroads looms. Brumback "envied Tom. He had the driving of the car to occupy his mind, while I could only sit still and think" ("Racing With Hun's Shells").

The crossroads is impassable, and as a German plane flies above them, Mien manages to turn the car around and look for a corduroy cutoff road that goes through the woods. Brumback worries how the four patients in the back will suffer during a bumpy ride, but they have no choice. "There is nothing," he writes, "that makes one more nervous than the feeling that a great danger hovers near and yet one is unable to fly away from it. My nerves were now worked up to a state bordering on frenzy. I clung fiercely to the side of the car and clenched my teeth to keep from crying aloud" ("Racing With Hun's Shells").

As if the bad road and the bombs, now receding, aren't enough, Brumback's nose begins to twitch and he realizes that they have driven into a cloud of gas. It is his first encounter with this invisible terror. They stop the ambulance and help the wounded put on their masks, and discover that the most fragile patient has died. The long, challenging night, though, is soon over and the ambulance reaches camp: "The morning sun was just dispelling the mists from the river. Everything was quiet and peaceful. I felt a warm exhilaration of pleasure. This was a life worth living, this soldier's life" ("Racing With Hun's Shells").

Brumback's account painted a true and vivid picture of what Hemingway might expect in a few months as he headed to the Italian front. Brumback had faced death; he'd encountered gas; he had survived the pounding, devilish, rain of shells. Surely if Brumback was alive to tell such tales, then Ernest Hemingway could fight through any fear and live to tell about it, too.

Biographer Carlos Baker writes that by Christmas 1917, just a month after they met in the newsroom, Hemingway and Brumback pledged to apply to the ambulance service right after the New Year (36). Jeffrey Meyers states outright, and incorrectly, that Hemingway volunteered in December 1917 (26). Yet, in a letter to his family dated 2 January 1918, Hemingway was still wondering about whether to join the Marines or try and land an aviation commission after spending another summer in Michigan. Other accounts (Fenton 48; Griffin 52; Mellow 47-48) suggest that Hemingway postponed the decision to apply for service as an ambulance driver until at least February.

The U.S. Army had taken over the American Field Service ambulances in the fall of 1917. Military regulations meant that Brumback's missing eye now disqualified him for further service. Hemingway too was disqualified for Army service by poor eyesight. So when the American Red Cross announced in February 1918 that it was looking for ambulance drivers, it gave both men new hope for joining the war effort.

Word of the Red Cross recruiting drive arrived at the same time Brumback's long narrative appeared in the newspaper. The Star reported one Sunday that a former Kansas Citian, who'd been turned away by the army, had signed on for administrative duty with the American Red Cross ambulance service in Italy ("To Italy for the Red Cross"). If Hemingway hadn't already made up his mind; the idea of going to war with an ambulance unit would have certainly taken hold at this time.

Twelve days later, on 22 February, The Star ran an announcement that the American Red Cross was seeking men and women to serve on the Western front--in field offices, canteens, and relief efforts in France and Belgium. Also sought were four ambulance drivers to serve in Italy ("Red Cross Calls Men"). Some Hemingway biographers, including Fenton (48) report on the legend that Hemingway and Brumback intercepted a wire story and applied before the story ran. Yet, Marcelline reports that Ernest told her the inside information came from his own interview with Red Cross recruiters. "(H)e learned that the Red Cross was only accepting men who were not eligible for the United States Services and the draft. They took men in general good health who were unable to fulfill the physical requirements of our own country's armed services. 'Could a man with poor vision in one eye get in?' he asked them, he told us later. The Italians answered in the affirmative" (Sanford 157). (3)

Within days, however, Hemingway was told by the Red Cross personnel unit in St. Louis that the call for drivers had been withdrawn and he would be on call if more men were needed (Pettus, 26 February 1918; Hemingway letter to Marcelline 2 March 1918).

So it was yet unclear when exactly Ernest would head overseas. "I enlisted for immediate service but got gypped on the immediate end of it," he told Marcelline in a letter dated 2 March 1918. He claimed that all expenses paid, an Italian uniform, and first Lieutenant status came with the deal. "I now study French and Italian and have learned to drive an ambulance," he wrote to his sister. "Right jazzy. Pull for the old bird" (qtd. in Sanford 275). (4) Hemingway's last day at The Star was 30 April 1918, and he took the Santa Fe train back to Chicago. He arranged one more fishing trip up to Michigan with buddies, though Brumback begged off, saying his parents wanted him around till the minute he left for Europe (Brumback 4 May 1918).

The Red Cross telegraphed Hemingway in Chicago, asking him to submit another application (Pettus, 2 May 1918), and he also took a physical and passed (Baker 39; Fisk). In a letter dated 4 May, apparently written in response to Hemingway's questions, Brumback advised his friend about what to pack, including two seasons of underwear, at least six pairs of woolen socks, driving gloves, and his Missouri National Guard uniform, "as one needs a roust-a-bout uniform for the front." Brumback said he'd picked up an Italian language guide so he could work on ordering "a bottle of Chianti in approved style." On 13 May, Brumback and Hemingway met in New York. The Red Cross put up the recruits at the Hotel Earle, a Greenwich Village brownstone, just off Washington Square Park and half a block away from a replica of the Arc de Triomphe. Two weeks later, they boarded a French liner, the Chicago (Baker 39). (5)

The Star sent off its former staffers with a small announcement: "Hemingway, who is 19 years old, tried eleven times to get into service since the war started, but the physical tests ruled him out each time" ("Go Together"). The newspaper misstated Hemingway's age--he was still eighteen--but included line-cut portraits of both men. Later, after a trench mortar shell exploded and tore up Hemingway's leg, The Star also carried the news. Hemingway, the paper reported on 14 July 1918, was the first casualty of 132 former staffers now serving with the Allies ("Wounded on Italy Front").

Also on 14 July, Brumback sent a letter to Hemingway's parents about how their son had ended up in a hospital bed in Milan--with bandaged fingers, he couldn't yet write himself. "Ernest was not satisfied with the regular canteen service behind the lines" Brumback wrote. "He thought he could do more good and be of more service by going straight up to the trenches. He told the Italian command about his desire. A bicycle was given him which he used to ride to the trenches every day laden down with chocolate, cigars, cigarettes and post cards. The Italians in the trenches got to know his smiling face and were always asking for their 'giovane Americano.'" Brumback told Dr. Hemingway that, after regaining consciousness, Ernest had carried a wounded Italian on his back to the aid station and that a silver medal of valor was forthcoming.

While Hemingway lingered in Europe until January 1919, Brumback returned to Kansas City in December 1918, at the end of his six-month Red Cross stint. His hometown newspaper soon published another piece featuring his voice. He offered a brief analysis of the Austrian surrender, tying it to two places that would play a role in the Hemingway legend--one in his fiction, the other in his biography. "Italy" Brumback wrote, "still only convalescent from the Caporetto disaster, met the flower of the Austrian army and inflicted on it the stinging defeat that made possible the final victorious offensive resulting in the armistice. The cause of the victory can be directly attributed to the Austrian failure on the Piave in June" ("Austria").

Hemingway, of course, was wounded on the Piave front during the Italian pusbback against the Austrians. He had read about Caporetto a year earlier when the Italian retreat was reported on the front page of The Kansas City Star. Hemingway eventually drew on that momentous Italian setback for the central military action of A Farewell to Arms. Brumback and the convalescent Hemingway may have talked about the Italian front sometime during the fall of 1918. Certainly they discussed their service and their thoughts about the war around the campfires and fishing holes of Michigan, where they spent some time together around Ernest's 21st birthday in July 1920 (Baker 70-71).

In 1936--after Hemingway's ascent as a literary star, after Brumback's divorce and battle with the bottle, and after both of their fathers had committed suicide in the 1920s--Brumback recounted some of his memories of Hemingway in a piece for The Star. "I wish I could pat myself on the back and say that I recognized his ability even then. But I didn't. Not until later" ("With Hemingway"). Brumback expressed his admiration for the brave young man with boundless energy he'd worked with at the Kansas City newspaper, and portrayed himself as a hesitant sidekick. He fell asleep when Hemingway tried to keep him up all night drinking wine and reading Browning. He tried to convince Hemingway that bribing a Paris taxi driver to take them close to exploding German shells wasn't such a good idea. He modestly kept his own role out of the story. But with the paper trail he left behind Brumback would've been perfectly justified in taking a little credit for himself.

At least one Star colleague suggested that Brumback had another influence on Hemingway. In a 1952 letter to Charles Fenton, then researching The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway, Henry Van Brunt claimed that Brumback helped introduce Ernest to "all the best brothels in town." In another letter to Fenton, Clifford Knight suggested that by the early 1930s, Brumback "seemed puzzled by Hemingway's success" in light of his own unsuccessful efforts to write.

Yet as far back as 1920--after Kansas City and after the war--Brumback envisioned Hemingway as a "budding author" and told him so in a letter dated 23 April. Brumback was in Chicago and had visited with Dr. and Mrs. Hemingway, where he listened to Hemingway's mother express her hope that Ernest would go to college. (6) Brumback assured her that the school of life would do his friend just as well. "Of course she's fundamentally right," Brumback told Hemingway, "but there's no reason in the world a man shouldn't educate himself." He went on to advise that Hemingway bone up on the fundamentals of psychology. "You can learn to judge human nature better, and how to assign motives for human action," he wrote. Read an elementary text, then you can move ,on to James and Freud, he added. "(Y)ou'll be repaid for your effort in every line you write." (7) If Hemingway replied to Brumback on the matter, the letter is lost, but his body of work would indicate that his friend's advice was not unreasonable.

There's no evidence that Brumback published anything after his memories of Hemingway appeared in The Star in 1936. At the time, Brumback had returned to Kansas City from California to work again in the real estate business. Later, when Fenton was working on his chapter about Hemingway's Star years, the biographer was apparently unable to reach Brumback. In 1952, Brumback had taken ill, and three years later, at age 60, he died in a Kansas City nursing home.

WORKS CITED

"Austria Gave Up Easily/Piave Defeat in June Paved Way, Theodore Brumback Says." The Kansas City Star 17 December 1918: 3.

Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. 1969. New York: Collier's, 1988.

Brumback, Theodore B. "With Hemingway Before 'A Farewell to Arms.'" The Kansas City Star 6 December 1936: C1.

--. "Racing With Hun's Shells: An Experience Running a Car 'Over There' Described by an American Ambulance Driver." The Kansas City Star 10 February 1918: 18D.

--. Letter to Clarence Hemingway. 14 July 1918. In The Kansas City Star 11 August 1918: 9A.

--. Letter to Ernest Hemingway. 4 May 1918. Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Library. Boston, MA.

--. Letter to Ernest Hemingway. 23 April 1920. Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Library. Boston, MA.

"Brumback Home From France/A Short Furlough After Five Months in Ambulance Service." The Kansas City Star 17 November 1917: 1.

Capers Jr., Julian. Letter to Ernest Hemingway. 23 February 1927. Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Library. Boston, MA.

--. Letter to Ernest Hemingway. 8 April 1927. Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Library. Boston, MA.

"Fear the Aerial Bomb/Boche Drops His Message at Any Time and Place / Theodore B. Brumback, Home From France, Tells of Experiences as Ambulance Driver-New Hope for French Soldiers." The Kansas City Times (Star morning ed.) 23 November 1917: 8.

Fenton, Charles A. The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway: The Early Years. New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1954.

Fisk, Eugene L. Medical report. 9 May 1918. Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, MA.

"Go Together from the Star to the Italian Front." The Kansas City Star 13 May 1918: 4

"Golf Mishap Cost an Eye" The Kansas City Star 16 September 1915: 3.

Griffin, Peter. Along With Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.

Hemingway, Ernest. Letter to his family. 2 January 1918. Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Library. Boston, MA.

--. Letter to Marcelline Hemingway. 2 March 1918. Rpt Sanford, 274-276.

--. Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961. Ed. Carlos Baker. New York: Scribner's, 1981. Knight, Clifford. Letter to Charles A. Fenton. 8 February 1952. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript

Library. Yale University. New Haven, CT.

Mellow, James R. Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences. 1992.Cambridge: Perseus, 1993.

Pettus, Charles. Letter to Ernest Hemingway. 26 February 1918. Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Library. Boston, MA

--. Letter to Ernest Hemingway. 2 May 1918. Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Library. Boston, MA.

--. Letter to Dr. Clarence E. Hemingway. 20 May 1918. Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Library. Boston, MA.

"Red Cross Calls Men." The Kansas City Star 22 February 1918: 13.

Red Cross letter to Ernest Hemingway. 12 August 1918. Hemingway Collection. John E Kennedy Library, Boston, MA.

Sanford, Marcelline Hemingway. At the Hemingways, With Fifty Years of Correspondence Between Ernest and Marcelline Herningway. Moscow, ID: U Idaho P, 1999.

"'Ted' Brumback and a Trench Bomb He Brought Back." The Kansas City Times (Star morning ed.) 19 November 1917: 2.

"Ted Brumback Under Fire/Graphic Account of Attack Told by Kansas City Boy/Shells Exploded Near the Young Ambulance Driver While He Was Taking a Load of Wounded Over Shattered Roads," The Kansas City Star 26 August 1917: 6A.

"'Ted' Brumback to France." The Kansas City Times (Star morning ed.) 11 May 1917: 2.

"To Italy for the Red Cross." The Kansas City Star 10 February 1918: 1.

Van Brunt, Henry. Letter to Charles A. Fenton. 4 March 1952. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale University. New Haven, CT.

Wilson, Dale. Letter to Charles A. Fenton. 30 March 1952. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale University. New Haven, CT.

"Wounded on Italy Front/Ernest M. Hemingway Formerly Was Reporter for The Star." The Kansas City Star 14 July 1918: 5A. A briefer news account appeared on Page 1 the previous day.

NOTES

(1.) Brumback's version of his first encounter with Hemingway appeared in The Star nineteen years after the fact. "It was my first day as a cub reporter on The Kansas City Star," Brumback wrote in "With Hemingway Before A Farewell to Arms" But Dale Wilson's memory, expressed in a letter to Charles Fenton in 1952, seems more accurate. After Brumback returned to Kansas City, Wilson said: "Hemingway was sent out to get his story. That was their first meeting... " It hardly seems likely that on the first day of Brumback's return from Europe he'd begin a job at The Star. Perhaps he went to the newsroom to line it up. But more probably, given the Brumback family's prominence, when the newspaper learned of his return, the city editor assigned Hemingway to interview Brumback and write up his story for the afternoon edition.

(2.) The newspaper carried a story about Brumback's golfing accident in 1915, and a report, on 11 May 1917, about his acceptance into the American Field Service ambulance corps in France. "Mr. Brumback is said to be peculiarly fitted for the ambulance service" the story read, "as he has acquired a serviceable use of French, German and Spanish in two visits to Europe, and is further qualified by a knowledge of motor cars and by athletic ability" ("'Ted' Brumback to France").

(3.) Marcelline's reference to "Italian" recruiters is probably an assumption on her part. The American Red Cross regional office in St. Louis conducted the drive. According to a Red Cross letter to Hemingway's father dated 20 May 1918, Ernest was interviewed by a Red Cross representative in Kansas City (Pettus).

(4.) Hemingway's effort to join the Red Cross might have gotten a fraudulent push from one of his journalist friends, Julian Capers, a drinking buddy who worked for United Press in Kansas City. Letters from Capers to Hemingway suggest that Capers submitted an affidavit swearing that Hemingway was twenty-one and spoke fluent French and Italian. Nine years after the war ended, Hemingway tried to return the favor. When Capers mentioned his hope of a news service posting in Paris or elsewhere in Europe, Hemingway offered to swear to Capers's skills in French. Capers demurred: "Thanks for your affidavit offer," he wrote, "but I believe I'd be safer really to know my stuff this time; they're not so careless about those details as they were during the war" (Letter to Hemingway, 8 April 1927).

(5.) Red Cross correspondence with Ernest and Clarence Hemingway, in the Hemingway Collection at the JFK Library, depicts an agency not entirely certain of itself. In a letter dated as late as 12 August 1918, three months after he sailed from New York and one month after he was wounded in Piave, the Red Cross advises Hemingway on vaccinations and the need to apply for a passport. "Do not start for New York until you receive specific instructions to do so" the letter warns.

(6.) Hemingway recounts Brumback's visit in a 20 August 1920 letter to Grace Quinlan. In that letter he also reveals his anger at his mother, who, he says, squandered any college money on a new cabin at the lake (SL 35-38).

(7.) Brumback's twelve-page letter of 23 April 1920 includes a recap of failures he'd suffered since returning from the war. He went into advertising, though his job was as a salesman, at an agency where he wasn't allowed to write--the "only thing I can do" He left to join a cousin's grocery store venture in Kansas, a business that ended with near-comical results. Then he wandered. He worked on the docks in New Orleans. He hopped a ship to France, then an oil tanker to Cuba. Back in New Orleans he landed a newspaper telegraphy job, but gave it up to chase a woman who ultimately disappointed him. Brumback also reports on his reading of Joseph Conrad--Hemingway's recommendation. Brumback had polished off Almayer's Folly and was now devouring Victory. Sounding like the boastful Hemingway of the future, Brumback had determined that the latter novel "promises to give all the K.O."

STEVE PAUL

The Kansas City Star