The Definitive Hemingway Crash Letter | 1954, Letter from Africa, Signed “Love, Papa” and “E.H.”

Written weeks after surviving two plane crashes, Hemingway turns pain into comedy.

Hemingway’s legend was never larger than in 1954, when he survived two plane crashes in two days on safari in Africa. Newspapers declared him dead, only for him to emerge from the jungle carrying bananas and a bottle of rum.

Written weeks later in March, as he lay in a hospital bed “about 35 hrs out of surg: 2130,” this remarkable letter captures Hemingway doped on morphine, bruised, stitched, and still entirely himself. He lists his injuries with black humour and transforms pain into performance, turning catastrophe into comedy. Unusually, he signs it twice, both “Love, Papa” and “E.H.”, fusing the tender intimacy of his private voice with the swagger of the public man. Letters of this candour from Africa are almost never seen.

In January that year, Hemingway and his wife Mary Welsh were flying over Uganda when their chartered Cessna struck a telegraph wire and went down near Murchison Falls. They were stranded overnight in the bush before a rescue plane arrived the next morning—only for that aircraft to catch fire and explode on takeoff. Hemingway’s skull, shoulder, kidney, and spine were crushed, and he suffered severe burns. The world’s press ran obituaries. Two days later, he appeared in Entebbe, limping but alive, grinning beneath his bandaged head.

This letter, written during recovery in Africa, recounts the ordeal with extraordinary immediacy. Hemingway lists his injuries with the same hard precision as his prose, noting “spasm races,” a “ruptured kidney, liver, spleen,” “burns scalp and hand,” and joking that “no gentleman ever shits on the floor.” He ends, with grim satisfaction, “Kleenex finally indispensable.” The tone is grotesque, funny, and unflinchingly physical — Hemingway’s defiance distilled to the page.

Written on thin Esleeck “English Bond” paper and signed twice, “Love, Papa” and “E.H.”, the letter balances the legend and the man. It is raw, unfiltered Hemingway — a private dispatch from pain and survival.

Among his known correspondence, this stands alone. It is the earliest and most direct surviving account of the crash period, written while still in hospital, his humour sharpened by trauma and morphine. Later letters from Venice and the Gritti Palace reflect recovery and distance. This one remains in the wreckage. It is the defining Hemingway crash letter.

A later account of the same events, written months afterward from Venice to his lawyer Alfred Rice, sold at Nate D. Sanders Auctions in 2023 for $237,055 (£187,751). That letter was composed in comfort, filtered through recollection. This present example, written in Africa and signed twice, stands as the most immediate and important first-hand survivor.