Sergeant Dashiell Hammett, A Soldier's Story
Sergeant Dashiell Hammett, A Soldier's Story
Sergeant Dashiell Hammett was born on May 27, 1894, and was raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and later Philadelphia. He left formal schooling at the age of thirteen and began working a variety of jobs before joining the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. From 1915 to 1922, he worked as a private investigator, an experience that would later shape American crime fiction.
In 1918, during World War I, Hammett left Pinkerton to enlist in the U.S. Army Ambulance Corps. While serving, he contracted the Spanish influenza and later tuberculosis, illnesses that would follow him throughout his life and permanently affect his health. Though his military service was cut short by illness, he served honorably during a time when the United States was newly committed to the Great War.
Unable to return to detective work due to declining health, Hammett turned to writing. Drawing directly from his investigative experience, he pioneered a new, hard-boiled style of crime fiction. His works, including The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and Red Harvest, reshaped American literature and helped define the noir genre. His characters were morally complex, disciplined, and often shaped by the realities of violence and loyalty, qualities not unfamiliar to men who have served in war.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, despite ongoing tuberculosis and fragile health, Hammett again chose to serve. In 1942, during World War II, he re-enlisted in the U.S. Army at the age of forty-eight. He was assigned to the Aleutian Islands, where he served as editor of the Army newspaper The Adakian. During this assignment, he co-authored The Battle of the Aleutians, documenting the little-known but strategically significant Pacific campaign.
It was during his second period of service that Hammett developed emphysema, further compounding his health struggles. Even so, he fulfilled his duties until his discharge.
After the war, Hammett became involved in political activism, which brought legal challenges and controversy during the Cold War era. His political positions resulted in blacklisting and imprisonment for contempt of court, but those chapters, while significant, do not erase his honorable military service in two global conflicts.
Sergeant Dashiell Hammett died on January 10, 1961, from lung cancer at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. In recognition of his military service, he is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
He remains one of America’s most influential crime writers, an author whose realism, discipline, and moral tension were born from both investigation and war. Yet beneath the literary acclaim stands a man who answered his country’s call twice, even when his health argued otherwise.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
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