Ernest Hemingway and Agnes von Kurowsky — A Love Story of World War I
“ When the casualties had first come in during those late summer campaigns in the foothills of the Dolomites Agnes had been appalled at the horrifying wounds…”
The story of Ernest Hemingway and Agnes von Kurowsky has become something of a romantic legend that, nevertheless, grows ever stronger with the retelling, and ever more poignant. Of course Hemingway’s novel, A Farewell to Arms (and the many film and TV versions), has a fictionalised version of their relationship at its heart.
Agnes Hannah von Kurowsky was a tall dark haired girl from Washington
D.C. She was a dutiful daughter and, for two years, stayed at home nursing her ailing widower father. When her father died in 1910 she took a job at the Washington Public Library, but soon became bored with the dull routine and applied to become a nurse at Bellevue Hospital and was accepted.
Agnes was kind, generous, bright, full of energy, and fond of people; she made an excellent nurse.
With America’s entry into World War One in 1917 she applied to join the Red Cross Nursing Service, and in late June 1918 sailed for Europe. After some additional training in France, Agnes and her companions were sent by train to Northern Italy where they were dispersed to various hospitals…
