A Farewell to Arms!

«A Farewell to Arms!» — a novel about love during war, about the desire to live and be loved against all odds.
World War I. An American, Frederick Henry, voluntarily serves in the Italian army. He is a lieutenant in... the medical service and hardly sees any war. Monotonous days are diversified by gatherings with his comrades, drinking, and visits to the officers' brothel. One day, Frederick's friend and roommate, the surgeon Rinaldi, introduces him to the nurses of a British hospital. He himself decides to pursue one of them — the Englishwoman Catherine Barkley, but she shows more sympathy for Frederick. Catherine is also a volunteer; her fiancé was killed in France. Their mutual interest — partly born from loneliness and emotional traumas — gradually evolves into a romantic relationship.
After being wounded by artillery shells, Henry ends up in the hospital with a severe leg injury. He is evacuated from the front line and taken to a field hospital, from where he is later transferred to Milan, where he will undergo surgery and rehabilitation. In Milan, Frederick is assigned to a newly opened American hospital, where Catherine Barkley is also transferred. They reunite with Frederick, and it turns out that their feelings for each other are very serious; however, their relationship must be hidden from others.
Returning to the front, Henry witnesses and participates in the catastrophic retreat of the Italians from Caporetto, but he cannot escape; the military police arrest him for desertion. Seeing no other way out, Frederick jumps into the water and, hiding, makes it to Milan. He has decided to end it with the war for good. In Milan, he reunites with Catherine, finding brief happiness.

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899—1961) — an American writer, war correspondent, and Nobel Prize laureate in Literature in 1954.
Even in school, Ernest decided he would become a writer and confidently pursued this goal; after graduating, he became a correspondent for the local Kansas City newspaper, but for him, as for many, World War I changed everything.
In 1918, eighteen-year-old Ernest Hemingway voluntarily went as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross to the Italian front. By July, he suffered serious injuries from mortar fire, and 26 shrapnel pieces were extracted from him; one kneecap was replaced with an aluminum prosthesis. This was the first time Hemingway «cheated» death, and later he would outsmart her several more times. The experiences he endured during that period gave birth to the work «A Farewell to Arms!».