In which war did Hemingway serve as an ambulance driver?

Hemingway served as an ambulance driver during World War I. In 1917, after the U.S. Army rejected him because of poor eyesight, he volunteered with the American Red Cross Motor Corps in Italy. He arrived at the Italian Front in 1918, where he transported supplies and assisted wounded soldiers.

Hemingway was seriously wounded on July 8, 1918, while distributing chocolate and cigarettes to Italian soldiers near Fossalta di Piave. Mortar fire struck the area, and shrapnel wounded him in the legs. Despite his injuries, he helped carry another wounded soldier to safety before losing consciousness. His wartime experiences later shaped his fiction and his views on courage, trauma, and disillusionment.

The most famous literary result was A Farewell to Arms, a 1929 novel about an American ambulance driver serving with the Italian army. Hemingway did not serve as a regular U.S. Army soldier in World War I; he was a Red Cross volunteer, a distinction often lost in simplified biographies.