College, military service, early postwar career
Hemingway attended the University of Montana and Dartmouth College, but never graduated, instead enlisting in the U.S. Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Known for his sense of humor, in late 1943 at Camp Shanks near Orangeburg, New York, he overheard two older men (one of whom he recognized) in a bar arguing over who was the better writer, Ernest Hemingway or William Faulkner. Jack interrupted, and said in his opinion, there was "a writer that was a better storyteller than either Hemingway or Faulkner – Maurice Walsh." One of the men said, "I am Maurice Walsh," to which Hemingway responded, "I'm Jack Hemingway ... pleased to meet you."
Assigned overseas to France in 1944, he started as a military police officer commanding a special unit of black soldiers, and later obtained a transfer into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the newly formed U.S. wartime intelligence agency that evolved into the CIA after the war. As a French-speaking First Lieutenant with the OSS, he worked with the French Resistance. Characteristic of his sense of daring, he parachuted into occupied France with his fly rod, reel and flies, and was almost captured by a German patrol while fishing after his first mission. While on a leave in Algiers, he met with his father's third wife, Martha Gellhorn, whom Jack called his "favorite other mother", who was on her way to Italy to work as a war correspondent with the French Forces.
In France in late October 1944, Hemingway was wounded and captured by the Germans behind enemy lines in the Vosges, and was held as a POW at Moosburg Prison Camp until April 1945. While a POW, he lost 70 lb (32 kg), dropping from 210 to 140 lb (95 to 64 kg). Upon his release, he was flown to Paris in time to join the crowds celebrating VE-Day on May 8, 1945, in the Champs Elysees so beloved by his parents, and he was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the government of France for his wartime service.
After the war, he was stationed briefly in West Berlin and Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany, and at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, before leaving the army. After his discharge, and back in civilian life, he worked as a stockbroker, and then as a fishing supplies salesman. In 1967, he retired and returned to live in Ketchum, Idaho, his father's last home and burial place. There he taught languages, pursued his passion for fly fishing, and wrote two autobiographical books.
