At 17, Ernest Hemingway started his professional writing career as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. He abandoned the job after six months to volunteer in WWI, though he was very disappointed when his poor eyesight kept him from enlisting. Instead, he volunteered for an Italian ambulance army unit. The Italian government gave Hemingway the Silver Medal for Military Valor after he carried a wounded man to safety, though he was injured himself. "A Farewell to Arms" is based on this experience, during which Hemingway fell in love with his nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky. Hemingway became a preeminent American writer, also penning "The Sun Also Rises," and "For Whom the Bell Tolls." In 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his lifetime achievements thanks in large part to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Old Man and the Sea" (1952). Hemingway was also an avid hunter and angler.