""Boy," he said, "you have to learn to drink under the withering fire of the fixed stare or the guided missile. During the war I had set up headquarters for my Irregulars in a farmhouse that was smack on the front line. It was designated at command headquarters as Task Force Hem. The Germans frequently sent patrols right into our front yard. Well, you know the artist John Groth? He came one night on his way to some assignment and we put him up. During dinner the German eighty-eights opened up and hit around us pretty good, shattering plaster and window glass; when it cleared, Groth crawled out from the potato cellar, where he had dived with the other eaters when the first pieces of plaster started flying around, and he said, 'Mr. Hemingway, how could you sit there eating cheese and drinking wine when they had us under fire?'
"'Groth,' I said, 'if you hit the deck every time you hear a pop, you'll wind up with chronic indigestion.' You going to finish your wine?""-Ernest Hemingway