Blown to bits by a mortar during the First World War, he unwittingly saved the life of a young Ernest Hemingway, but his identity has been a mystery for more than 100 years – until now.

Historians believe they have put a name to an Italian soldier who bore the brunt of the mortar explosion, in doing so saving the life of the man who would later give the world A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and other classics.

Hemingway was just 18 and serving as a Red Cross volunteer on the Austro-Italian front when he had his brush with death on a section of the battleground which ran along the Piave River in the Dolomites.

As he was handing out cigarettes and chocolate to Italian soldiers in the trenches, Austro-Hungarian forces lobbed a mortar which badly wounded the young American and killed outright an Italian soldier standing close to him.

James McGrath Morris, an American author who has written a book about Hemingway, and Marino Perissinotto, an Italian amateur historian, used a process of elimination to identify the Italian infantry soldier who was standing next to Hemingway when the mortar landed on July 8th, 1918.