Correspondents and soldiers alike enjoyed Hemingway's company during World War II, but none more so than Colonel "Buck" Lanham, commanding officer of the Fourth Infantry Division's Twenty-Second Regiment. Here, Lanham is seen with Hemingway in late September 1944. The Twenty-Second had a few days earlier been part of a successful drive to penetrate Germany's border defenses, the so-called Siegfried Line, and in the photograph the two are examining a deserted piece of artillery used in those defenses.
Lanham's affection for Hemingway almost seemed like hero-worship sometimes. Writing of a dinner shared near the frontlines, he wrote that "Hemingway, presiding at the head of the table, might have been a fatherly Mars delighting in the happiness of his brood."
Hemingway with Colonel Charles "Buck" Lanham
Unidentified photographer /
Gelatin silver print, 1944
Image courtesy Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts
