Hemingway

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Narrator

As a Christmas gift for his wife, Hemingway hired a small plane that flew them over the Ngorongoro Crater, the mountains of the moon, and the mighty Murchison Falls in Uganda. As the plane dipped low above the gorge, so Mary could take photographs, the pilot encountered a flock of birds, dove to avoid them and hit a telegraph line. The plane plunged into the bush. Mary was knocked unconscious, two ribs broken. Hemingway suffered a torn shoulder. They spent the night high above the bank of the Nile for fear of elephants. Fortified by a bottle of Scotch that had somehow survived the crash and listening to the cries of hyenas. (engine booming) A search plane spotted the wreckage but failed to see the survivors. Word quickly spread around the world that the great writer, Ernest Hemingway, was dead. Meanwhile, Hemingway had flagged down a passing launch and when they reached the landing on the Eastern shore of Lake Albert, a policeman and a bush pilot offered to fly them on to the Ugandan capital, Entebbe. They climbed aboard. But as the ancient plane rattled down the rutted runway, the fuel tank exploded in fire. (engine popping) The pilot helped Mary and the policeman get out through the windows. Hemingway was too big to follow them. Twisted metal barred the door, flames were rising. Hemingway was trapped. He hurled his head against the door again and again until he battered it open. He insisted to newsmen gathered in Entebbe that he had never felt better. "My luck, "she is still good," he said and he looked forward to reading all the premature obituaries that had already been published around the world. -

Ernest

In all obituaries or almost all, it was emphasized that I had sought death all my life. Can one imagine that if a man sought death all of his life he could not have found her before the age of 54. Who else gets in two plane crashes in two days in Africa, has the word go out all over the world that he's dead and reads his own obituaries? No one does that. -

Narrator

Surviving two airplane crashes in the interior of Africa, Ernest Hemingway and his pilot, Roy March returned to Nairobi in high fetal. On the second crash, Hemingway suffered a bad bump on the head Mrs. Hemingway, however, came through unscathed. (upbeat music)