An American Crusader at Verdun [Illustration: Philip Sidney Rice] An American Crusader at Verdun By Philip Sidney Rice Published by the Author, at Princeton, N. J. 1918 Copyright, 1918, BY PHILIP SIDNEY RICE Published October, 1918 Printed in the United States of America Foreword I hesitate to write of my experiences because so many books have been written about the war, and the story of the ambulancier has been told before. Many young Americans in sympathy with the Allied cause, and particularly the cause of France, and many Americans anxious to uphold the honor of their own country, when others were holding back the flag, went over as “crusaders” in advance of the American Army. Many had gone over before I went; some have come back and told their story and told it well――and so, although I went as a “crusader,” I am not the first to tell the story. But if my story interests a few of my friends and kin I shall be satisfied with the telling of it. PHILIP SIDNEY RICE. RHODES TAVERN, Harvey’s Lake, Pa. Introduction A citation in general orders, by the Commanding General of the 69th Division of Infantry of the French Army, which declares that Driver Philip S. Rice “has always set an example of the greatest courage and devotion in the most trying circumstances during the evacuation of wounded in the attacks of August and September, 1917, before Verdun,”[1] ought to be sufficient introduction in itself to this story of an American Ambulance Driver who bore himself valiantly in those days of the great tragedy at Verdun. And yet for the story itself, and for the man who has written it, something can be said by one of his friends in appreciation of both the story and the man. The literature that is coming out, and which will come out, of the great war, will never cease as long as history shall recite the efforts of the German Spoiler to gain the mastery of the world, and fill the world with hate and hunger. Therefore, every bit of evidence that shall touch even so lightly on every phase of the conditions, and reveal even in the slightest sense a picture of what happened, will have its value. Of Mr. Rice, I can say that as a youngster the spirit of adventure was strong in him. He tried his best to break into the War with Spain in 1898, but his weight and heart action compelled his rejection by the surgeons. He later, however, served with credit under my command, as an enlisted man, and as an officer of the Ninth Infantry, National Guard of Pennsylvania. When the United States entered the conflict on the side of the Entente Allies in the present war, Mr. Rice, knowing that he could not gain a place in the fighting forces, volunteered for service in the American Ambulance Corps in France. Herein is written the story of that service simply told, without vainglory or boasting. It is a story of a soldier’s work――for it was as a soldier he served.