He saved Ernest Hemingway during the First World War and we do not know who he was – 28/01/2019

One of the people who gave more literature of the twentieth century I did not have a name

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In July 1918, Ernest Hemingway was badly wounded by an Austrian mortar strike in the trenches on the banks of the Piave in the Dolomites during the decline of the First World War. The American Nobel would be dead if there had not been an Italian soldier who accidentally spread himself between him and the projectiles, but Hemingway's biographies they never identified him.

With the sound of war, his act was anonymous. Until now, because an American biographer and an enthusiast of Italian history have managed to regain his identity: he was called Fedele Temperini, he was 26 years old and he was from Montalcino, a small town in the Tuscan region.

"In writing my latest book on Hemingway, I realized that all sources were talking about an Italian soldier, without saying his name. It bothered me: to give him his dignity, we must know who he was ", tells the American writer James McGrath Morris, who published in 2017 a book on his involvement in the conflict.

The young Hemingway, only 18, is one of the Americans who decided to go to Europe. He enlisted as a volunteer in the Red Cross, which he sent to Italy, where he ended up carrying cigarettes and chocolates on a bike to the soldiers in the trenches.

He won the trust of the troupe and even got a nickname, he lives in America. Temperini was not a hero and he did not know that he was going to lose his life for a future great writer. He had only approached her for a pack of cigarettes. "But it was very important: think that otherwise we would not have had The old Man and the Sea"says McGrath Morris.

Thanks to a search in the Italian archives, the biographer managed to reach 18 soldiers who died that day in the battle. But he could not go any further and therefore published an article in which he publicly called on Italian historians to complete their work.

He was lucky: Marino Perissinotto, a history lover, who lives near the Piave, made contact. He managed to find books that identified each soldier's military units and where they were. With this information, he reduced the search to three finalists. Two of them served in an infantry regiment remained in another trench.

Only one possible name remained in the 69th Infantry Regiment, in the Ancona Brigade, where the events took place: Fedele Temperini, one of the many young slaughtered in the trenches on the banks of the Piave to restrain the Austrian forces. More than 600,000 Italians died.

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"So that I find his name ways to do justice and honor to one of the many boys who came here to badume their duties. He was not a hero, it was for cigars and sweets, but he was here and wrote the story, "Perissinotto said.

The Italian corroborated the facts with a report from the Red Cross detachment on the front, that they would have treated the first American wounded in this battle and a soldier died at the 69th Infantry Regiment.

Hemingway never sought to know who was the boy who had saved his life. He was too busy recovering from his multiple injuries at the American Red Cross hospital in Milan.

As he told his friend Theodore Brumback, he found a soldier still alive, but seriously injured, and took him to first aid. His stay at the Milan Hospital was memorable. There he meets Nurse Agnes von Kurowsky, whom he falls head over heels in love with and plans to marry.

In the end, the nurse left him by letter, but left such an imprint on the young writer who inspired him in the character of Catherine Barkley in Adieu aux armes (1929).

Now, Perissinotto and McGrath Morris hope that Fedele Temperini be added to the memorial for all those who fell on the Piave. His name is already part of the story. He did not go to get chocolates and cigarettes from the young Hemingway, the world would have been left without the war correspondent, great vividor and Nobel Prize winner for literature.

By Aanna Buj. Rome Rome, correspondent. L & # 39; vanguard