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.

this is what verdun looked like. there is something amazing about walking in those same spacious -- spaces. for what these do and what millions of others did. my next question is potentially the most -- the question of the evening to both of you. was ernest hemingway really the bass that he said he was? >> he was a bragger. he kind of was. d likehing he did seeme throughout his life, before he got to kansas city, has been invention. partly incurs by his own writing. there is this blur between was this his life or his imagination at work? for a long time,, he liked people to think he was a soldier in the war. he didn't this abuse people of the notion. when people identified him in the italian army, yes and no. he had an italian uniform by being a noncombatant with the red cross, but he was not a combatant in the war, or the spanish civil war, not a combatant in world war ii, though he did get in trouble for trying to be one. i have heard you talk about this before. was he a member len strieber -- was he an ambulance d