Editing E. E. Cummings (section)

===War years===
In 1917, with the First World War going on in Europe, Cummings enlisted in the [[American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps|Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps]]. On the boat to France, he met [[William Slater Brown]] and they quickly became friends.<ref name="fountn bio"/> Due to an administrative error, Cummings and Brown did not receive an assignment for five weeks, a period they spent exploring [[Paris]]. Cummings fell in love with the city, to which he would return throughout his life.<ref name="utexas">{{citation |url= http://research.hrc.utexas.edu:8080/hrcxtf/view?docId=ead/00030.xml|title=E. E. Cummings: An Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center|work=Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center|publisher=University of Texas |access-date=May 9, 2010}}</ref>

During their service in the ambulance corps, the two young writers sent letters home that drew the attention of the military censors. They were known to prefer the company of French soldiers over fellow ambulance drivers. The two openly expressed anti-war views, Cummings spoke of his lack of hatred for the Germans.<ref>Friedman, Norman "Cummings, E[dward] E[stlin]". In Steven Serafin, ''The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature'', 2003, Continuum, p. 244.</ref> On September 21, 1917, five months after starting his belated assignment, Cummings and William Slater Brown were arrested by the French military on suspicion of espionage and undesirable activities, they were held for three and a half months in a military detention camp at the {{lang|fr|Dépôt de Triage}}, in [[La Ferté-Macé]], Orne, Normandy.<ref name="utexas" />

They were imprisoned with other detainees in a large room. Cummings's father made strenuous efforts to obtain his son's release through diplomatic channels; although advised his son's release was approved, there were lengthy delays, with little explanation. In frustration, Cummings's father wrote a letter to President [[Woodrow Wilson]] in December 1917. Cummings was released on December 19, 1917, returning to his family in the U.S. by New Year's Day, 1918. Cummings, his father, and Brown's family continued to agitate for Brown's release. By mid-February, he, too, was America-bound. Cummings used his prison experience as the basis for his novel, ''[[The Enormous Room]]'' (1922), about which [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]] said, "Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives—''The Enormous Room'' by E. E. Cummings&nbsp;... Those few who cause books to live have not been able to endure the thought of its mortality."{{sfnp|Sawyer-Lauçanno|2004|pp=120, 127, 133–134}}{{sfnp|Bloom|1985|p=1814}}<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fitzgerald |first1=F. Scott |title=Afternoon of an Author |date=1958 |publisher=The Bodley Head |location=London |pages=150–155 |orig-date=Essay first published 1926 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/afternoonofautho0000fsco_g9d6/page/152/ |chapter=How to Waste Material: A Note on My Generation}}</ref> Later in 1918 he was drafted into the army. He served a training deployment<ref name="fountn bio"/> in the [[12th Division (United States)|12th Division]] at [[Camp Devens|Camp Devens, Massachusetts]], until November 1918.{{sfnp|Kennedy|1994|p=186}}<ref>{{cite web |url= http://freepages.military.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~worldwarone/WWI/divisions.html#Twelfth|title=Data on U.S. Army Divisions during World War I, WWI, The Great War}}</ref>

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| quote = <poem>
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
        who used to
        ride a watersmooth-silver
                                  stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                  Jesus

he was a handsome man
                      and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
</poem>
| source = "[[Buffalo Bill's (poem)|Buffalo Bill's]]" (1920){{efn|[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47244/buffalo-bill-s "Buffalo Bill's" available at the Poetry Foundation]}}
}}