After D-Day, and his failure to get ashore, Hemingway realized he had a reporting job to do. And with Martha Gellhorn in Italy with the Carpathian Lancers – a free Polish unit attached to the British 8th Army – busily chasing the Germans out of that beautiful country he knew so well – he better get on with it.

He decided to go V1 hunting, this time with the Mosquito Attack Wing 140.

The Attack Wing was led by the schoolmasterly, and rather jovial, Group Captain Peter Wykeham Barnes. Hemingway loved him and had a huge regard for the work Wykeham Barnes and his men were doing, especially the low level attacks on various Gestapo Headquarters in Norway and France, where the Mosquito pilots were able to quite literally ‘chuck’ their bombs through the front doors.

On the night of 29th June Wykeham Barnes took Hemingway up in his own Mark V1 Mosquito EGX which, with its wooden frame and fabric skin was very light, and with its two hugely powerful Rolls Royce Merlin engines – the same as in the Spitfire – was very, very fast. But it was strictly a two-seater aircraft – with the fuselage no more than five feet across – and with the tall and overweight Hemingway squeezed into the navigator’s seat, and the even larger, and taller, Wykeham Barnes squeezed into the pilot’s seat alongside, it was extremely cramped and uncomfortable.

Initially the flight was uneventful, but just as they were heading south, back down the English Channel, they ran into a stream of V1s heading for Portsmouth. Wykeham Barnes – somewhat against his better judgement, but egged on by Hemingway – set off in hot pursuit. The first V1 they tried to destroy – by getting above and ahead, and then diving as it passed under them, and blasting it with machine gun and cannon shell – ended up rather too near the Portsmouth anti-aircraft guns which began firing at the Mosquito instead of the V1. Wykeham Barnes managed to get in one short burst of fire at the V1 before he had to pull away to avoid crashing into the barrage balloons protecting the harbour.

Hemingway loved the ‘firework display’, and encouraged Wykeham Barnes to try for another V1.

They flew around for a while and after about ten minutes they spotted a lone V1 heading toward Portsmouth. Hemingway shouted over the intercom.

” Come on, Barnsey, lets get him!”

Wykeham Barnes had orders to keep Hemingway safe and he knew that if he got too close and blew a V1 up it might be curtains for the Mosquito too; but he felt himself caught-up in the moment, in that perilous state that most people who tangled with Ernest often felt themselves to be in: namely having to prove themselves in front of this hugely charismatic, egotistical, romantic, brave, and famous novelist. It was a ludicrous situation, but one Wykeham Barnes felt obliged to see through.

” Okay, Ernie, here we go, hold on.”

They dived steeply on the V1 and got very close. When Wykeham Barnes thought the Doodlebug to be in range he emptied his entire ammunition reserves into the missile. Suddenly there was a flash from the V1 and a chunk of its fuselage came away and flew upward and over the top of the Mosquito. But the Mosquito again found itself coming under fire from the Portsmouth ant-aircraft gunners so Wykeham Barnes pulled away steeply in a gut wrenching 400 miles an hour vertical climb. But as the aircraft did so – and in a confusion of searchlights and triple anti-aircraft fire – there was a huge explosion, the blast of which sent the Mosquito spinning nose over tail like a Catherine Wheel back toward the ground, some 3,000 feet below. When a dazed Hemingway thought his last day on Earth had come, a very cool Wykeham Barnes regained control.

“Blast the Jerry blighters. But we got him didn’t we, Ernie, we got the swine.”

Hemingway was dizzy, but delighted.

” Goddam it, Barnsey, thought we were goners then.”

After they landed Hemingway and Wykeham Barnes spent the next few hours in the operations tent drinking whisky and talking about mental stress and strain, courage and fear, which of course were traditional Hemingway subjects. Wykeham Barnes was a great fan of Hemingway’s and told him he’d read all of his books and loved them.

After another drink or two Wykeham Barnes criticised USAAF for its harsh action in cases of combat nerves, or combat fatigue (the old shell shock of World War One), and quoted the case of a Fortress Captain who was busted down to private and put to work cleaning the aircraft he’d captained only the day before. Hemingway’s response was that toughness was required if the war was to be won, and that the Americans were on the whole untested and had to be tough on themselves, as he had to be on himself when he got to France.

Hemingway and Wykeham Barnes parted at dawn and went to their separate tents. When they met again at noon Wykeham Barnes thought how dreadful Hemingway looked and asked him if he’d slept well?

“No, sat up writing all night, had to get it all down while it was fresh.”