In 1928, Hemingway moved to Key West, Florida, and began deep-sea fishing. That same year, his father committed suicide. In 1932, Hemingway went on a two-month fishing expedition to Havana and began marlin fishing, which eventually provided material for The Old Man and the Sea. In 1933, he continued fishing off the coast of Cuba, sailed to Paris, and then went on to Africa for a safari in Kenya and Tanganyika. The safari provided a setting for Green Hills of Africa.
As a foreign correspondent in Paris, Hemingway began to raise funds for the Loyalist cause in Spain. In 1937, he went to Spain as a war correspondent covering the Spanish Civil War, which gave him material for For Whom The Bell Tolls, his best-selling novel about an American volunteer and a band of Spanish Loyalist guerillas. Hemingway's goals in the book included a clear depiction of the indifference of the world's democracies to encroaching fascism and the desperate need to fight against it.
In 1939, Hemingway moved to Finca Vigia (Lookout Farm), a house near Havana, Cuba. When World War II began, he volunteered to serve as a spotter for the U.S. Navy, outfitting his own fishing boat, the Pilar, to hunt for German submarines off the Cuban coast. In 1944, he became a war correspondent for Collier's and covered the war, including the liberation of Paris, with the U.S. Fourth Infantry Division. "Papa" Hemingway, as he was dubbed, purportedly liberated the Ritz hotel in Paris, particularly the bar, just prior to the arrival of Allied troops.
