"A Natural History of the Dead"—Hemingway's Surreal World War One Short Story

An Italian Army Dressing Station

In 1932 Ernest Hemingway, as an extra-feature to his bullfighting treatise Death in the Afternoon, included "A Natural History of the Dead," his  oddest reflection on his service in Italy during the Great War. Posing as a detached but cynical naturalist, he patches together his observations on the death throes and decay of various animal species and humans,  the nature of the fighting in the Dolomite Alps, and his fond memories a pleasant drive in the countryside around Milan picking up human remains left after a munitions plant explosion. The concluding, and longest, segment, describes the action at a dressing station where a fatally wounded—but still conscious soldier—has been prematurely placed among the dead and is causing a disturbance.

Anyway, it's well worth a read HERE

Or a listen HERE.