and james discussed ernest hemingway john to possums during world war i and how the war effected writing. served in the american volunteer ambulance corps which brought wanted soldiers to hospitals for treatment. the talk was hosted by the national world war i museum in kansas city museum. >> i would like to welcome you to your national world war i of a reallyhalf tremendous group of colleagues. they really did a spectacular job. along with our president and ceo

of luck to welcome you here to be only busy him dedicated to the first floor in the united citys and here in kansas come up and been since 1926. hopefully, you have been joins daiquiris.ay did to welcomeld like our friends at c-span and all of you watching online. i like to welcome you those of you who are members of the .useum it is your support that allows for great community gathering opportunities like this one. if you like more information on memberships, please connect at

our membership tables. many of you asked when you were heading in. you can also take a look online. committed to looking at the enduring impact of world war i from a global perspective and we would invite all of you to the galleries during opening hours to visit a variety of new things going on in 2018. many would consider this one of the last years of the centennial. art that insights of modern that is here from italy that was inspired by the writings of ernest hemingway. thanks to see paul for contriving some of the information or that. we would love for y'all to come

when you can find out wonderful resources to find out your connections to older one. we also invite you to a new and very exciting going -- thing going on here. , we are opening up a brand-new gallery. 23l be opening on february with a spectacular exhibition. on loan to us. you don't want to miss it. to you all coming back february through june 3. evening, we are joined by

explore worldo war i's impact on literature and authors, influential ernest hemingway and john to sponsors -- >> who had recently retired after four decades. like the best people i know, retirement as only meant that life has gotten busier for paul as he has focused on other projects. he is the editor of contemporary short fiction.

this evening is his most recent location. it will be available at the book signing after our conversation. jason graph is one of the founders and former presidents. ofhas spent a decade journals to their ancestral teacher and found that he does radio broadcasts. just a second, you'll hear the thoughts of tone. -- which the wall street journal named one of the five best books on mobile.

his newest book, the endless a french it made provide a history and analysis. these economist review, passages of literary analysis float as mr. morris tubbs the reader into the world of his protagonists. hundreds ofced speakers and at this point, that is the all-time i have seen that, nation of words, particularly from the economist. later on, we please join me in welcoming. [applause]

>> in january of 1917, woodrow wilson was returning for his second term as president. -- t here, we were station.own as union across the street it was not yet known as pershing. a bit further, there was a section of kansas city, missouri where the.700 if they think -- of the 27 buildings, 26 of them had drinking establishments during the words of the ball -- steve hall, intensity was a .lace of rolling terrain's

andcitigroup southward finally consume the settlement westward. hemingway's kansas city stretched 40 baltimore from the .orth end set thehy don't you mood for us? >> thanks. i love this place and auditorium and being here. really looking for to this conversation. graduatedt hemingway in chicago. summer and co's

did and his family's cabin. he did not know what he wanted to do in life. short, thisng story sister who was a year older, but at one point. she got the nod to go to college. hemingway talked about it, but ended not going to college that year. spent the summer trying to figure out what to do. who was a family friend and encouraged him to think about newspaper work. in kansas city, he worked for a lumber company, but had gone to college with an editor that kept telling him what he could get

him a job there. it and put off that decision for a long time. he tried to get hired in chicago, but got turned down and kind of at the last minute, he decided to go to kansas city. , hanging out,d pulling potatoes. the guy named carl edgar, who happen to have a job working for . field company like carl he saw carl as another reason to come to kansas city can figure out the rest of his life. at this point, a little more than 100 years ago, hemingway gets on the train and starts working at the kansas city star

as a reporter. to make a long story short, he spent six and a half months at the newspaper. it is a store that is fairly well known. monthst six and a half at the paper. he was eager to go to the warp. he was still too young to sign up without his parents permission. he talked about getting in the war at some point in through the -- ndship he leaves here, goes to italy and the rest is history. hemingway is a fairly familiar name for most.

he too is from chicago. guess some insight into this essential american author, his context of where he was prior to 1917. >> he has the birthplace of being in chicago. he was a product of a new york attorney. himas a real market against and he would have been politely called illegitimate. died,ther's wife finally so they get married at this point. hard upbringing for a sensitive kid. and gravitatedns

rapidly. was and that it hypocrisy. the point was a nerdy kid and nerdy is much more recent. up being in many ways -- history is cool to some people and even though he shows up on lists of the greatest authors of the point century, very few people read him. what we are getting to is that commonth share the generational action. >> most of our audience knows

that it really starts officially april 2, 1917. there's still a great deal of american involvement to that. there was a great deal of american volunteering, specifically what the end would -- how does that come with this perspective of privilege? >> if you have a chance, come back tomorrow. there's an end and was upstairs. mentioning the exhibit, i have been to the museum this afternoon. 10 years of teaching high school and many of you in this room supported financially.

this is a unique museum. it really explains the costs of the great war. it also has a remarkable international aspect to it. someone from your can come and see this museum and appreciated. it is teaching institution of its ordinary quality you will see an ambulance upstairs to the ambulance is an interesting subject. already broken out before the united states got involved. would be the defining moment of the generation as up, it was ae defining moment of our generation they felt not to miss it. -- he became

left-wing and radical. the war was an exercise of tyrannical governments leading a slaughter. he did not want to miss it. he was not alone. a large number of them volunteered to go to the endless corps. ambulance was a way to be a witness on the front lines. when looking at the list of members, you had in a short married number of people. my wife was a phd and quickly

corrected me on that. in order to be an end when trevor, one of the qualities is you needed to have money. secondly, you needed to know how to drive. those during that time the you have a driver mostly wealthy kids. kids a harvard, yale princeton. it was like a prep school gathering, with the exception of hemingway, these were kids that sheridan upper-class background, many of whom felt artistically inclined and so they threw themselves on the frontline theory -- ferrying soldiers. >> what were some of hemingway's

motivations? >> one of the great friendships ted. young man named he was son of a prominent judge and one of those ivy leaguers. partly because he had to leave accidentfter a golfing that took out one of his eyes. it meant he would not qualify for military service, but he did qualify for at the time the first phase of the endless core. he went back to kansas city in november, where in the newsroom, he meets hemingway and writes

the story about his return. he had already published a long letter about the violence he had seen in the hard work of the amulets service in france and it was brumback who encouraged hemingway. wasn't expecting to get into the military, even though he did join the missouri guard and did some maneuvers out while training. i think he was the sole influence on hemingway. they planned to join the red cross service in italy. ago,is exactly 100 years february of 1918. around that time, very impressive narrative feature

night in thene amulets service. a horrible night with missiles and picking up bodies and violence and near-death. that thesehings gunmen were encountering. i suspect and read about this in the book that hemingway was not only influenced, but by the experienced and it was part of the encouragement. certainly, i don't have to be a combatant, but the endless service was what would work. hemingway spent several months in that time. kansas city had parades, just spread more fever was

and weight was in the middle of that. >> you all spoke of the research. i'm not sure i pulled this one from. because i cannot face anybody after the war and not have been in it. that is a young hemingway. >> [indiscernible] [applause] [laughter] president woodrow wilson is going to go to congress and ask for a declaration of war against germany. be saved fort

democracy and if there is a phrase that democrats can rally around, i believe that when is it, at least for the last 20th century. april 1926 and over 50% of those who serve at the went through union station that we talked about and i showed you a picture of read here in kansas sigrid not -- right here in kansas city. abroad.go -- when booze is so easily available, loose women were not far away. kansas city officials got a wake-up call when they put him

on notice. -- cooperationn your in securing and maintaining clean conditions? >> good luck with that. americans, that was almost the extent of their experiences with the war. they did not go overseas. it is over 60%. -- it was a far different story. that all my write methods of doing things in the past to me now.

-- the grade, crooked fingers of the dead, the dark look of dirty, mangled bodies, their , thes in the ambulances rippingshells -- the tear that shells make cap beautiful quotes in your book, janey. it is really fantastic. you see behind me some images you have provided me. i invite you to take a look at the website. you connect to go through our digital collection. imageshave a couple of so you understand the type of

destruction this process will be seeing. just one of the shells makes the type that is in the main gallery. day,is why still to this verdun is pockmarked with craters even 100 years later. when you see those moonscape's that were inspired by peer jackson, that is verdun. -- peter jackson, that is verdun. when the sponsors got up to do in a year after, it was

horrible. guy whovery sensitive .tudied poetry he was overwhelmed by the death and instruction. having dinner as more troops were being brought the frontline in this white dust would settle on them and it looked like corpses were being taken to battle. at night, they brought back the wounded and they overloaded these ambulances. when you see how small it is, every time they hit a bump, that would be groaning and moaning. he was exposed to gas which was .egal -- lethal at one point, he worked in a room where he cared up -- carried out buckets of agitated

amputated limbs. -- it created a different vision of the war which is in contrast of what hemingway experienced. wore let nois they one who participated untouched and because he wrote as opposed lawyer, back or being a we can see in his writing how , atly the war touched him least american literature. oxo -- actually on the field already. was there any impact on him? >> certainly.

he had been part of the voluntary ambulance corps. when we beganget to enter world war i, we had tremendous measures passed by the u.s. congress writing certain things and the europeans were the same way. he said to his interrogators, i like the french people too. they are really nice. when we entered the war, the army took over the endless core. for a couple months, he hung around europe having a great time in paris, joining with and that is where these two writers were -- would eventually eat. >> gruesome images.

-- happened pointust want to make the that for hemingway, this was right before he lands in paris he beratesto italy, a taxi driver into taking them on a ride through paris looking through this shelling and he wants to get close to these explosions. arrived,day when they they are immediately assigned ammunitions plan about four miles outside that had exploded and they were starting to go pick up the pieces. that was essentially hemingway's first experience.

body parts, picking up pieces of skin and flesh. behold, maybe this had something to do with censorship, but with a few days, hemingway sends back a postcard to his friends that starts out, having a wonderful time. he carried them in the get the old general hospital. it is a goofy response to what he later wrote in a very remarkable story. memory 10 tok this 12 years later. from there, it is a sign that she is assigned to the endless core and a little riverside they are housed in

an old mill and there was not much action there and it was so little action that hemingway essentially got bored and finally wanted to see the front and there was so little action, the place was referred to an old country club, because mostly they played baseball and bathed in the. within a couple of weeks, got antsy and decided he wanted to get a little close and ended up leaving the service, thentially voluntary for rolling canteen unit that took them much closer to where the war was raging. hemingway gets up real close to the trances of that action with

the canteen service which prompts ulceration that i know. i do it and we have talked about didre which is hemingway hemingway actually ever drive and amulets? >> i was prepared for the question. >> we will show you guys. let me show you guys a couple of quick pictures. we have what the ambulance look like here. that was one of the first. this would have been what it might have looked like. >> this is in italy. lovely photo of some americans. soldiers irt-time

believe which is where hemingway would deliver or write a bicycle from a back unit and deliver cigarettes and coffee. there may be reason why this picture has never been published before. this is a picture i believe hemingway took. ,e describes to a friend .hooting across the river it is a little hard to read, but i thought it was fascinating to actually see. coincides ofhat this report.

>> we will hear about dennis a little better on. i will take a moment for break and tell you that you do and theeld towards here type of thing they were cutting he wanted tok paddle up undiscovered rivers. in note not on climbed unwrapped. we will invite you to join us. these are all from my iphone. not trying to plug iphone, but telling you they are that pretty. i think the american red cross

headquarters is where he had to go back to. us as we go around beautiful wine drinking country if you want to live like having way. the americans come in and this is some of the spaces we will be looking at. -- this is what verdun looks like. the question of the evening, to both of you, was ernest a bad ass?eally

,> everything that he did before he got to kansas city has yth. soaked in mess -- mi of was thiss blur his life or imagination at work? for a long time, he likes people to think he was a soldier in the war. well, yes and no purist he had but he wasuniform, not a combatant in the war. he was not a combatant in the spanish civil war. he was not a combatant in world war ii, so he did sort of get in

trouble for trying to be one. this before.bout in europe, was hemingway and ambulance driver? >> there is nothing that tells me hemingway actually drove in entrance. he might have been one and there is a picture in the museum. i guess it is still behind it. indicatesothing that an account of being in an endless and there was nothing going on for those two weeks. it is very unlikely that he drove an endless. i don't know that he knew how to drive at that point. >> the amulets is were, some of them had a series of pedals that you had to press.

that increasece fuel so you could easily sheep the device of air. amount of enormous training to drive some of these things. i don't know hemingway ever had the chance to. fix or repair daily, before it's go down daily and the fiat's work and asleep breaking down and that is what left them to roles they knew before they were having a meeting. it was not an easy vehicle to drive. it took enormous skill. if he had been in an endless, it would have likely been a co-driver.

there's an episode that had been discussed and dismissed. this is partly based on his own account, but hemingway was unconscious after being wounded and the story developed that hemingway picked up they wanted to tie in soldier and direct him to safety in a hail of machined up adding toded his wounds. i don't believe it happened the way that has long been described and i'm not alone in believing that it didn't quite happen that way. there's more evidence that and got awas cited -- andor determining

amulets arrives to take him away and he says no, not that hurt to go get those guys that are closer to the action. there's an actual citation that refers to that in a way the story is carrying a soldier to safety. heading to the end of the war, you mentioned that wanteday is going to be and that is going to take him through. i think there is a sense he tries to go out and do a bit more battling. >> is called to service. 18.ngway is wounded july he spent the next several months in the hospital.

somewhere towards the end of october, he thinks he is well enough and he goes out to the campaign.to aid a don't know exactly what he did or exactly how long he stayed up there, but he came up ready quickly with jaundice and came back to the hospital. timehatever he did at that , he received another metal from the italians eventually, but the rest of the next couple of months he has been in physical therapy running around italy. then of course is the big love story which i get into too much. at that point, hemingway turns 19. i only refer to it in brief terms and don't get too deep into it. i did talk about the illusion and those echoes.

>> hard to admit you cut out the sex scene. >> i had to ask permission to say something quotes i'm saying is to make sure. you canube channel, watch this again and again. if you want to read things that i cannot say on the stage, i think you should pick up this book. it is fantastic. way to go. talking about literary prowess, i think there was a professor who said the way we write about war was effected fundamentally by hemingway, but it was john who said there is a special help for writers -- that any finished work of art

implies. ande were innovative important works. that.pand a great deal on can you dig in? hera journalist who has shoot it into something. i'm not a literary scholar, so when i was looking at this, one of the things i discovered was .ot the drinking picking certainly enhanced it. and, it is not the version of midnight in paris that woody allen gives us. the american dollar went far, so starving writers could live in randomly. hemingway -- nd

he and hemingway came together. -- felt the war had fractured society in such a way that the old way of expressing themselves would not work anymore. the vocabulary we use would not work anymore. they purposely set up to write in a different fashion. he actually engaged in the same of a best consisted pronoun, verb and maybe something else. it was a different thing that he set up. they were both involved to try to find a new way to express what they had seen. for things like news clips, jump cutting from films.

all of these things that people were experiencing in talking about these two people, they took such different lessons from the war. my version of hemingway is he saw war has in -- and inevitability. he saw war as a test of one's one's illness -- manliness. and secondly, war brought love. and it came by virtue of war. the sponsor's was much more influence by his left-wing thinking. hemingway wanted to represent in his art form what he had seen,

yet no intention of wanting to use his writing to change the world were despots in this felt his writing would be to change the world. the next thing i discovered that i thought made the story interesting in the books would actually be read by the very group of people that would go on to fight the next war, so incensed, the greatest generation was raised on ,iterature about the first war so their conception was shaped by these men and others who were writing at that time and reflecting on what steve said, hemingway, the newsroom to the

war. perhaps part of hemingway's attempts to write about the war .s a sense of writing a report >> we tend to think that the war ited in 1918, when in fact went on and on for several years. we still in the content is of the war. hemingway, as a journalist, cover the war as they continued. mussolini.out he had met mussolini. covered the greco turkish war. he was there watching these strategies continue to unfold

after his own personal extras in the war and as he again writing in paris, he was getting away from the short stories he cannot sell when he came back to the these and started writing chiseled, tiny stories that were largely reflective of his -- therem, but were was still satire, or look at the the henry james's and other victorian writers. >> if these gentlemen have not convince you to go back and thought he's by ernest hemingway, i strongly suggest.

it is really beautiful writing. ofyou, like me are not a fan their is male stories, a story out there, big two hearted river. it is a pleasure to dig back in because of you all have done. >> when people ask that haven't read hemingway, i send them back to his first book of short stories called in our time. also, jamie and i have done a program like this before. i think i surprised him when i told him in my expense, i was a osposos more than hemingway. i love the experiments with

writing and really couldn't. i think at this point, the last time i looked at usa trilogy, it was a little freaky. ,ot sure it holds up over time by my entry was taken jamie's book. you should also include other writers. ours, haven't read one of veterinary novel which i used to love to read to kids because what you see is part of an immigrant family living in midwest nebraska, the horrors of european conflicts coming and grabbing these kids lives in taking them back to the old. it as ant intending antiwar novel. is watchingresting

those -- fitzgerald never got to the war front, but the american writers who got to the war front , their writing was forever changed in a way that others cannot quite get. that's what makes the -- tionship between hemingway worked hand in hand in writing and hemingway opososwait to hear what d had to say. the analogy -- say --ask people, people if you ask people about the cubist, they will send the cost

of. if you ask about literature, people think of hemingway. theas part of a larger -- social influences on just one person. time of thehe armory show and futurism. explosion.ern >> it doesn't just hit writing. it is our. we will be talking about that. all aspects of the art. less, i'minutes or going to ask you the hardest question. wrote --, he famously

and i'm it features the battle of cap original -- this is a quote that many associate with hemingway. the world breaks anyone -- everyone and afterwards, many are strong and broken places, but those who will not break, get killed. andills very good, gentle impartial jury if you are none tothese, you can it will be -- it will kill you too. >> one of his great danes was death. one of the most signature lines of the novel. >> the question is, hemingway

osposos, where they broken? emotionally was fragile. the wounding may have been the very first head injury that hemingway encountered and suffered. a long series of head injuries ended up contributing to his way we and that is one brokenness i would say resonates. people often turn to their art because they cannot express themselves by other means.

process.for this >> laser gentlemen, we invite you to come down and ask some of your own questions. while you're doing that, i will question.ntial easier hemingway, would he be good at twitter? i think he would not have much patience with it, but who knows? >> i do a lot of teaching of writing and i think what people forget is that it is an endless process of revision. you don't just write something and put it out to the world.

it is much like pottery. it is one thing to throw the pot down, but it is endless hours. if you read hemingway, the reason we still read him is because there's never next a word. a clearness of prose that is very hard. much andd writing so now our contests to write like i'm in way and it has become cliche to write like hemingway that what does is diminishes his accomplishments the same way that if you go into a museum and you see paintings that cause riots and now we think nothing of. to read hemingway properly, you have to read a few paragraphs from sherwood, anderson and read hemingway again the first time different hishow

prose was. think that is why hemingway indoors. -- harder to access than hemingway is. most of the time -- i feel like i might have thrown all you thisersus working microphone. i'm going to ask you to more questions and then we are going to quickly end.

unfortunately, we don't have enough time to look at what happened to the friendship between the two of them, but that is exactly right. i'm assuming we have an example of hemingway's writing while he was in high school and then we had example after he went to europe. can we tell how much the spirits impacted his writing? in a learned how to write certain way and with a certain kind of freedom. he wrote some accompanist narrative feature stories, learned how to use dialogue in narrative features and i don't

suggest that he learned how to write in kansas city, but it certainly helped his writing and he got some ideas about writing. let's start with a generation of literary writers. they had a desk called the exchange desk. he was surrounded by guys who were writers and he learned from his older gentleman. one example i used is following a hearing this crime, one of wrote anerary guys oppressive political profile of this ask murderer, essentially, comparing him to -- it was wonderfully done and for me, another lesson that was part

of hemingway's college education in kansas city learning about .ow it can be fashioned out i think there are reasons to look at that. also, he develops much more five years later. >> i would courage you if you pick up the book, there are some articles in the back. it to take our last question from this next gentleman. profiled toou individuals who had defined -- profound differences on the allied side. do you see any from a german site -- the german side question mark -- from the german side?

>> i don't want to automate the cost of the war. as devastation in europe was on a scale unimaginable by us and a - terious virus, so -- he had much more european roots. there was a lot of rivalry going differencehink the was so great that there was a psychic connection between these groups of writers, but i think wereny ways, europeans lless.ss -- word

this is the question we're going to end on. if you have not read junger, he was a military officer who said if you're ernest was hemingway junger. our earnest a global war is part of what we look at at the museum. i wanted to end this on the postscript. any comic book, the endless drivers. i thought it was stunningly beautiful. we might not have ever heard of ernest hemingway had a not been for and at times shoulder -- the

tie in soldier -- i tally and -- italian soldier. >> we never identify or learn the name of this fall in a tie in soldier -- italian soldier. for some reason, forgot to ask. river marks the spot where hermit -- hemingway was injured. there is no mention of the soldier. if you look at 19th-century

papers, they a famous family that escapes fires without naming who they are. book, -- k of my >> that is where we will end. thank you all for being here. inis this gathering together tv monotonous on couches to her mother these individuals and ultimately sometimes to say their names so we will finish with these words. according to thai military records for these are the names of 18 men who died or been missing and combat along the , 1819 -- 8 or 9

1918. [reading italian names]

latest gentlemen, thank you for joining us. [applause] -- ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us. [applause] >> this is market history tv. , everys all weekend weekend, only on c-span. >> sunday on american history

tv, an interview with henry hank thomas, a finger of the student nonviolent corning committee and a common attic during the vietnam war. the program is from the west point in her oral history collection. here is preview. some white cnn and did not realize it you use an n-word for the black, you could have serious problems and some of them did. the army had to do something and indeed they did. 2% of thely about officers in vietnam or african-american during first part of the war, 1965, 1956. weref the k.i.a.'s

african-american and i became a problem in the word cannon fodder was being used to i will tell you, that was not the situation. what it was his african-americans generally preferred and went to the combat arms. .hat is where you got your rank you chance of making rank pretty fast. second, those were the elite units of the army at the time and yes a lot of us were gung ho. we were predominate to airborne units in the other reason was we wanted the chance to prove that we were good and would fight for our country and we did. the downside was that it was

time to give out the metals, that is when i began to get into trouble. blacks are not getting the metals and that is one of the issues with my caps on. i was confronting a captain as stifel medically as i can -- i was confronting a captain as democratically as i could. why andsome black ncos we recommended this guy in this and nothing ever became of it, so that was the basis of my confrontation with a captain and of course, i requested his the i.t. and go to you just don't do that and think

you do not have faith in his particular leadership, so that is when >> wants the entire interview with hank thomas sunday at 10:00 a.m. eastern here on american history tv. douglas wilder was the first african-american elected as governor in u.s. history, serving virginia from 1990 until 1994. next on lectures in history, mr. while there is a guest speaker at a virginia commonwealth university classic king at the political history of the state capital. he reflects on five decades of involvement in state and local politics, which includes terms as lieutenant governor, senator and mayor. the class is about 70 minutes. >> all right, let's see.