Hemingway on War

I consider "For Whom the Bell Tolls" to be one of the best pieces of historical fiction ever written. This is because very little of it is fiction in the truest sense. The premise is that American demolitions expert Robert Jordan is attached to an International Brigade, fighting on the side of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. He is there because he is a committed idealist, but he quickly becomes disillusioned. That book is heavily excerpted in this collection of Hemingway's writings and from the excerpts; you can see the tremendous tragedy of that war. The best segment is when he describes the actions of the Republican forces after they capture a town. A small group of men labeled as Fascists are rounded up and killed. This includes a priest and some men who were in fact modest shopkeepers and respected in the village. However, mob rule asserts itself and even when some in the crowd want to spare their lives, the frenzy of the moment drives the results. One-by-one the men are led out through a gauntlet and beaten to death by the crowd. In many ways, it demonstrates how that war went. The middle evaporated, leaving little more than the radical Communist and Fascist sides. There is also no one better than Hemingway at writing about the occasional absurdities in the life of the common soldier. In one story in this collection, a small group of Fascist troops are captured by the Republican forces. They are to be shot and those to be executed are debating whether it is better to get down on their knees first. The fatalism of those men is a lesson in what war does to people after a time. I have read some histories of the Spanish Civil War, but if I were asked for the best reference to what really happened in that war, I would point them to Hemingway. When you read Hemingway on war, it is clear that he has experienced it at the local level. While he does take sides in the conflicts he writes about, the overpowering characteristic of his descriptions is how people try to make sense out of a senseless brutality. War fundamentally comes down to two separate groups of people, each trying to annihilate the other. He is critical of war, not in the abstract, but in the particulars. Stupid officers, absurd tactics, pathetic egoists and petty bickering are the targets of most of his criticisms. It is hard to characterize his approach to war as one that glorifies or condemns it, as it has aspects of both. However, he is the best at making the simple human side of war interesting and this collection demonstrates how good he is at it.