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The type of position that Hemingway held with the American Red Cross as ambulance driver and canteen operator would be appropriated by women once America fully entered World War I. His volunteer service soon became an unwitting escape from the combatant role then urged upon healthy young American men; women were now encouraged to take on the non-combatant roles supervised by volunteer organizations like the Red Cross and YMCA, whose famous “doughnut dollies” operated canteens for the American doughboys fighting the war. By the end of the war, Hemingway’s Red Cross activities would have allied him more with the role of American women than men—hence, perhaps, his public exaggerations of his role on the Italian front and supposedly in the Italian army.
The type of position that Hemingway held with the American Red Cross as ambulance driver and canteen operator would be appropriated by women once America fully entered World War I. His volunteer service soon became an unwitting escape from the combatant role then urged upon healthy young American men; women were now encouraged to take on the non-combatant roles supervised by volunteer organizations like the Red Cross and YMCA, whose famous “doughnut dollies” operated canteens for the American doughboys fighting the war. By the end of the war, Hemingway’s Red Cross activities would have allied him more with the role of American women than men—hence, perhaps, his public exaggerations of his role on the Italian front and supposedly in the Italian army.


During the early twentieth century, another female figure publicly emerged at the battle front, one yet more troubling in terms of the prevailing paradigm since her activities could not be redefined as appropriately female because domestic: the female war correspondent. The first American woman to win accreditation from the War Department as an official war correspondent was Peggy Hull on 17 September 1918, but she was restricted from access to the battlefields of World War I (as were the few free-lance female correspondents); when the male correspondents realized the popularity of Hull’s stories about “the lives of the common soldier” away from battle, they “demanded her removal”{{sfn|Sorel|1999|p=xviii}} and she was “forced to spend the rest of the war in Paris.”{{sfn|Knightley|1975|p=127}}  Some eighteen years later, the women who covered the Spanish Civil War were still small in number but free of official regulations governing their behavior. Outsiders in Spain creating a new professional role, they were little regulated as to dress or behavior (as were the later female correspondents of World War II, who were required to wear uniforms and forbidden access to the front lines,{{efn|Gellhorn wrote in 1944 “a formal letter of protest to the military authorities about the ‘curiously condescending’ treatment of women war correspondents which, she said, was as ridiculous as it was undignified, and was preventing professional woman [sic] reporters, with many years’ experience, from carrying out their responsibilities to their editors and to ‘millions of people in America who are desperately in need of seeing, but cannot see for themselves’”{{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|pp=221}}''Gellhorn''.}} She wrote more pithily to a friend that “female journalists were now seen as lepers.” {{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|pp=221}}''Gellhorn''}} though individual resourcefulness frequently overcame this official restriction). These female correspondents ranged as freely as their inclinations, abilities, and contacts enabled.
During the early twentieth century, another female figure publicly emerged at the battle front, one yet more troubling in terms of the prevailing paradigm since her activities could not be redefined as appropriately female because domestic: the female war correspondent. The first American woman to win accreditation from the War Department as an official war correspondent was Peggy Hull on 17 September 1918, but she was restricted from access to the battlefields of World War I (as were the few free-lance female correspondents); when the male correspondents realized the popularity of Hull’s stories about “the lives of the common soldier” away from battle, they “demanded her removal”{{sfn|Sorel|1999|p=xviii}} and she was “forced to spend the rest of the war in Paris.”{{sfn|Knightley|1975|p=127}}  Some eighteen years later, the women who covered the Spanish Civil War were still small in number but free of official regulations governing their behavior. Outsiders in Spain creating a new professional role, they were little regulated as to dress or behavior (as were the later female correspondents of World War II, who were required to wear uniforms and forbidden access to the front lines,{{efn|Gellhorn wrote in 1944 “a formal letter of protest to the military authorities about the ‘curiously condescending’ treatment of women war correspondents which, she said, was as ridiculous as it was undignified, and was preventing professional woman [sic] reporters, with many years’ experience, from carrying out their responsibilities to their editors and to ‘millions of people in America who are desperately in need of seeing, but cannot see for themselves’”{{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|pp=221}}''Gellhorn''}}. She wrote more pithily to a friend that “female journalists were now seen as lepers.” {{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|pp=221}}''Gellhorn''}} though individual resourcefulness frequently overcame this official restriction). These female correspondents ranged as freely as their inclinations, abilities, and contacts enabled.


It would seem that ''The Fifth Column''’s Dorothy Bridges is a war corre- {{pg|385|386}} spondent—how else to explain her residence in Madrid’s Hotel Florida, the presence of a large military map and war poster and typewriter in her room, and her announcement late in the play that she has “sent away three articles?”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=82}}  But her lover Robert Preston, himself a war correspondent, calls her “a bored Vassar bitch”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=4}}—a change from the 1937 Madrid typescript where she is identified with Martha Gellhorn’s own Bryn Mawr. Rather than protesting, Dorothy agrees that she doesn’t “understand anything that is happening here.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=5}} Dorothy’s stereotypical characterization as a dumb blonde renders her presumed identity problematic. For example, Philip confusedly shouts, “Aren’t you a lady war correspondent or something? Get out of here and go write an article. This [the assassination of a Loyalist soldier in Philip’s room] is none of your business.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=33}} Her role as war correspondent cannot stand alone, but must be delimited by the modifier “lady”—or better yet relegated to the unnameable “or something.” But if the assassination of a soldier is not the business of a “lady” war correspondent, then what is? Indeed, what is the appropriate material for the article Philip directs her to write while simultaneously identifying what is off limits to her? In this telling scene, Philip places Dorothy in an untenable position because her identity and her subject matter remain unsayable. She fits into neither of the historically accepted categories of women at the battle front, prostitute or rape victim, nor into that of the more recently accepted category of nurse. But there she is nonetheless, at the war front instead of the home front, practicing it would seem the male profession of war correspondent.
It would seem that ''The Fifth Column''’s Dorothy Bridges is a war corre- {{pg|385|386}} spondent—how else to explain her residence in Madrid’s Hotel Florida, the presence of a large military map and war poster and typewriter in her room, and her announcement late in the play that she has “sent away three articles?”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=82}}  But her lover Robert Preston, himself a war correspondent, calls her “a bored Vassar bitch”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=4}}—a change from the 1937 Madrid typescript where she is identified with Martha Gellhorn’s own Bryn Mawr. Rather than protesting, Dorothy agrees that she doesn’t “understand anything that is happening here.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=5}} Dorothy’s stereotypical characterization as a dumb blonde renders her presumed identity problematic. For example, Philip confusedly shouts, “Aren’t you a lady war correspondent or something? Get out of here and go write an article. This [the assassination of a Loyalist soldier in Philip’s room] is none of your business.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1969|p=33}} Her role as war correspondent cannot stand alone, but must be delimited by the modifier “lady”—or better yet relegated to the unnameable “or something.” But if the assassination of a soldier is not the business of a “lady” war correspondent, then what is? Indeed, what is the appropriate material for the article Philip directs her to write while simultaneously identifying what is off limits to her? In this telling scene, Philip places Dorothy in an untenable position because her identity and her subject matter remain unsayable. She fits into neither of the historically accepted categories of women at the battle front, prostitute or rape victim, nor into that of the more recently accepted category of nurse. But there she is nonetheless, at the war front instead of the home front, practicing it would seem the male profession of war correspondent.
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In the second scene of the play, Dorothy easily switches her sexual loyalties from Preston to Philip, thereby introducing the motifs of loyalty and betrayal that suffuse the play. These motifs are appropriate given the complex politics of the Spanish Civil War, but also the complicated personal situation of Hemingway, who was emotionally torn between his wife and his lover. In an unlikely judgment, the prostitute Anita criticizes Dorothy for “tak[ing] a man just like you pick a flowers [sic]” (43). Dorothy casually rejects Preston, who makes bad puns and takes cover during shelling, in favor of Philip, who does not take cover but otherwise seems Preston’s inferior. A war correspondent who spends his time drinking and carousing rather than writing, he is certainly “''livel''[''y'']” (5), as Dorothy notes with approval, but not productive. On the other hand, she scorns Preston’s productivity since “he never goes to the front . . . [but] just writes about it” (20)—a scruple that suggests her own ethics concerning war correspondence. Of course, Dorothy does not know that Philip is deadly serious, his carousing a cover for counterespionage activities at which he is extraordinarily successful. In company with Max, he overcomes a Nationalist command post, kills multiple soldiers, captures a general and a political leader, and gains information that ultimately results in the capture of three hundred Fifth Columnists in Madrid. Petra the hotel maid explains that the Fifth Column is “the people who fight us from inside the city” (46). This term gained its historical currency from Nationalist General Mola who, “when asked by a group of foreign journalists which of his four columns he expected would take Madrid . .. replied, in words repeated incessantly during the . . . years of treachery and espionage since that time, that it would be that ‘Fifth Column’ of secret Nationalist supporters within the city” (Thomas 317)—a term that Hemingway’s play popularized. General Mola’s words unleashed in Madrid and elsewhere a charged atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia, which promoted a civil war within the civil war, given the uneasy coalition of political parties that eventually composed the Republic’s Popular Front.
In the second scene of the play, Dorothy easily switches her sexual loyalties from Preston to Philip, thereby introducing the motifs of loyalty and betrayal that suffuse the play. These motifs are appropriate given the complex politics of the Spanish Civil War, but also the complicated personal situation of Hemingway, who was emotionally torn between his wife and his lover. In an unlikely judgment, the prostitute Anita criticizes Dorothy for “tak[ing] a man just like you pick a flowers [sic]” (43). Dorothy casually rejects Preston, who makes bad puns and takes cover during shelling, in favor of Philip, who does not take cover but otherwise seems Preston’s inferior. A war correspondent who spends his time drinking and carousing rather than writing, he is certainly “''livel''[''y'']” (5), as Dorothy notes with approval, but not productive. On the other hand, she scorns Preston’s productivity since “he never goes to the front . . . [but] just writes about it” (20)—a scruple that suggests her own ethics concerning war correspondence. Of course, Dorothy does not know that Philip is deadly serious, his carousing a cover for counterespionage activities at which he is extraordinarily successful. In company with Max, he overcomes a Nationalist command post, kills multiple soldiers, captures a general and a political leader, and gains information that ultimately results in the capture of three hundred Fifth Columnists in Madrid. Petra the hotel maid explains that the Fifth Column is “the people who fight us from inside the city” (46). This term gained its historical currency from Nationalist General Mola who, “when asked by a group of foreign journalists which of his four columns he expected would take Madrid . .. replied, in words repeated incessantly during the . . . years of treachery and espionage since that time, that it would be that ‘Fifth Column’ of secret Nationalist supporters within the city” (Thomas 317)—a term that Hemingway’s play popularized. General Mola’s words unleashed in Madrid and elsewhere a charged atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia, which promoted a civil war within the civil war, given the uneasy coalition of political parties that eventually composed the Republic’s Popular Front.


That Philip, the seeming playboy-correspondent, is involved in something secret and serious is realized even by the idiot hotel manager, a point emphasized not in the 1937 Madrid typescript but in Hemingway’s 1938 Key West revision of the play. But dim Dorothy, who lives with Philip in adjoining rooms at the Hotel Florida, never suspects his other life, the resulting {{pg|389|390}} dramatic irony redounding always to Philip’s credit. Philip’s apologia for loving Dorothy sounds instead like an indictment: “Granted she’s lazy and spoiled, and rather stupid, and enormously on the make. Still she’s very beautiful, very friendly, and very charming and rather innocent—and quite brave” (44). While Dorothy is here damned by faint praise, Philip’s description calls his own values into question. Philip loves her because of her superficial qualities, only his appreciation of her bravery hinting at something deeper. In this sense, they are well matched, each largely drawn to the other because of physical size and sexual appeal. Dorothy is referred to as “that great big blonde” (41), and she is attracted by Philip’s sexual prowess,{{efn|Hemingway here engages in an ego-bolstering move, since Gellhorn “did not find [Hemingway] physically attractive” and sex with Hemingway “was never very good.” {{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|''Gellhorn''|pp=114, 135}} Moorehead notes that Gellhorn “told a friend [in a 1950 letter], [that] all through the months in Spain she went to bed with Hemingway ‘as little as she could manage’: My ‘whole memory of sex with Ernest is the invention of excuses and failing that, the hope it would soon be over’.”{{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|''Gellhorn''|pp=135-136}}}} noting that “he made me happier than anyone has ever made me” (47). When he throws her over, asserting, “You’re uneducated, you’re useless, you’re a fool and you’re lazy,” she responds, “Maybe the others. But I’m not useless” (83). She here indirectly refers to her sexual utility, which Philip identifies as “a commodity you shouldn’t pay too high a price for” (83). Hurt and angry, Dorothy retaliates by asking Philip, “Did it ever occur to you that you’re a commodity, too? A commodity one shouldn’t pay too high a price for” (84). Philip is amused, never having had to think of himself as a sexual object, indeed a whore (“commodity” an economic term saturated with Marxist significance). But Dorothy does not have the luxury of Philip’s laughter. She is psychologically vulnerable to the charge, for “women who push the boundaries of gender are censured for such behaviors” in gender- specific ways (Herbert 2). Just as the ''milicianas'' were figured forth as whores to discourage their presence at the front lines and to render them a familiar female type if they stayed, so too is Dorothy when she will neither leave the war front for the home front nor deny the interrelationship of war front and home front that she herself has created and represents.
That Philip, the seeming playboy-correspondent, is involved in something secret and serious is realized even by the idiot hotel manager, a point emphasized not in the 1937 Madrid typescript but in Hemingway’s 1938 Key West revision of the play. But dim Dorothy, who lives with Philip in adjoining rooms at the Hotel Florida, never suspects his other life, the resulting {{pg|389|390}} dramatic irony redounding always to Philip’s credit. Philip’s apologia for loving Dorothy sounds instead like an indictment: “Granted she’s lazy and spoiled, and rather stupid, and enormously on the make. Still she’s very beautiful, very friendly, and very charming and rather innocent—and quite brave” (44). While Dorothy is here damned by faint praise, Philip’s description calls his own values into question. Philip loves her because of her superficial qualities, only his appreciation of her bravery hinting at something deeper. In this sense, they are well matched, each largely drawn to the other because of physical size and sexual appeal. Dorothy is referred to as “that great big blonde” (41), and she is attracted by Philip’s sexual prowess,{{efn|Hemingway here engages in an ego-bolstering move, since Gellhorn “did not find [Hemingway] physically attractive” and sex with Hemingway “was never very good.” {{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|''Gellhorn''|pp=114, 135}} Moorehead notes that Gellhorn “told a friend [in a 1950 letter], [that] all through the months in Spain she went to bed with Hemingway ‘as little as she could manage’: My ‘whole memory of sex with Ernest is the invention of excuses and failing that, the hope it would soon be over’.”{{harvtxt|Moorehead|2003|pp=135-136}}''Gellhorn''}} noting that “he made me happier than anyone has ever made me” (47). When he throws her over, asserting, “You’re uneducated, you’re useless, you’re a fool and you’re lazy,” she responds, “Maybe the others. But I’m not useless” (83). She here indirectly refers to her sexual utility, which Philip identifies as “a commodity you shouldn’t pay too high a price for” (83). Hurt and angry, Dorothy retaliates by asking Philip, “Did it ever occur to you that you’re a commodity, too? A commodity one shouldn’t pay too high a price for” (84). Philip is amused, never having had to think of himself as a sexual object, indeed a whore (“commodity” an economic term saturated with Marxist significance). But Dorothy does not have the luxury of Philip’s laughter. She is psychologically vulnerable to the charge, for “women who push the boundaries of gender are censured for such behaviors” in gender- specific ways (Herbert 2). Just as the ''milicianas'' were figured forth as whores to discourage their presence at the front lines and to render them a familiar female type if they stayed, so too is Dorothy when she will neither leave the war front for the home front nor deny the interrelationship of war front and home front that she herself has created and represents.


The correlation between Dorothy and the whore would thus seem to be historically inevitable, a correlation that develops from the play’s very first short scene, which exists solely to provide a gloss on the play. A whore sees the sign on the door to Dorothy’s room: “Working. Do Not Disturb” (3). When she asks her soldier-customer to read it to her, he responds with contempt: “So that’s what I’d draw. A literary one. The hell with it” (3). She responds—to the sign? to his contempt?—with “a dry high, hard laugh,” asserting, “I’ll get me a sign like that too” (3). The stage goes dark and the scene ends, these allegorical characters disappearing forever, having provided their implicit commentary on all that follows. {{pg|390|391}}
The correlation between Dorothy and the whore would thus seem to be historically inevitable, a correlation that develops from the play’s very first short scene, which exists solely to provide a gloss on the play. A whore sees the sign on the door to Dorothy’s room: “Working. Do Not Disturb” (3). When she asks her soldier-customer to read it to her, he responds with contempt: “So that’s what I’d draw. A literary one. The hell with it” (3). She responds—to the sign? to his contempt?—with “a dry high, hard laugh,” asserting, “I’ll get me a sign like that too” (3). The stage goes dark and the scene ends, these allegorical characters disappearing forever, having provided their implicit commentary on all that follows. {{pg|390|391}}
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