_Walter Wheeler_ 327 _Harold Willis_ 327 _William H. Woolverton_ 329 [Illustration] INTRODUCTION Les États-Unis d'Amérique n'ont pas oubliés que la première page de l'histoire de leur indépendance a été écrite avec un peu de sang français. (_Général Joffre._) THE following pages, written and edited in the course of active service in France, tell, however imperfectly, something of the experiences of a small group of young Americans who have not been inert onlookers during the Great War. Few in number and limited in their activities, this little band of American ambulance drivers in France is of course insignificant when compared with the tens of thousands of young Frenchmen who crossed the ocean as soldiers and sailors to help America in 1777. To the valor and devotion of these Frenchmen we owe our very existence as an independent nation, and nothing that Americans have done for France during these last hard years of trial can be thought of--without embarrassment--in relation with what Frenchmen did for us in those unforgettable years of our peril from 1777 to 1781. The little group of Americans told of in this book who, during the past two years, have dedicated valiant effort and, not unfrequently, risked their lives in the service of France, can best be thought of as only a symbol of millions of other Americans, men and women, who would gladly have welcomed an opportunity to do what these men have done--or more. For, notwithstanding official silence and the injunctions of presidential prudence, the majority of Americans have come to appreciate the meaning, not only to France, but to all the world, of the issues that are to-day so desperately at stake, and their hearts and hopes are all with France in her gigantic struggle. They share with the world at large a feeling towards the French people of sympathy, of admiration, and, indeed, of reverence, such as exists towards the people of no other country; and millions of them, like these volunteers of the American Ambulance, have been tortured by a longing to have some share with the people of France in defending the ideals for which, as they feel, America has always stood, and for which France is now making such vast, such gallant, and such unflinching sacrifice.