Originally Posted by
HCM
He was present in World War I, and he was even wounded in world war one but he did not actually “fight” in World War I.
He was an ambulance driver in Italy for the American Red Cross which at the time was a neutral NGO. He was wounded by mortar fire while operating a red cross canteen feeding Italian soldiers.
He covered the Spanish Civil War as a reporter but again was not a combatant.
You know who was a combatant in the Spanish Civil War though? George Orwell. He also spent five years in Burma as a British colonial policeman. I think it would be impossible to write books like 1980 for an animal farm if you had never spent any time in government service.