Agnes was Hemingway's nurse in the military hospital in Milan in 1918 where he was recuperating from shrapnel wounds. She was seven years older than he, apparently extrovert, fun loving but level headed. He fell for her, and for a time she reciprocated, but eventually the age difference told and Agnes broke off the relationship (she had, in any case, become involved with an Italian captain whose mother prevented their marriage). Her diary of the time, which survives by chance, is interesting and readable, but unremarkable. Some of her letters to Hemingway are also printed, but not his to her which appear to have been lost. Agnes later married twice and when interviewed in old age, expressed resentment at the widespread identification of her with Catherine in A Farewell to Arms - it was, she said, a total distortion of the facts, and she seems to have regarded Hemingway himself as self centred and spoilt by adulation. She lived until 1984 and, by special permission, was buried with military honours.