Friends of France : $b The Field Service of the American Ambulance described by its membersVarious
History
Friends of France : $b The Field Service of the American Ambulance described by its members
Various
American Field Service; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, American
At night, on the main road, I have watched for hours the dimmed lights
of the _camions_, winding away north and south like the coils of some
giant and luminous snake which never stopped and never ended. It was
impressive evidence of a great organization that depended and was
founded on the initiative of its members. Behind each light was a unit,
the driver, whose momentary negligence might throw the whole line into
confusion. Yet there were no fixed rules to save him from using his
brain quickly and surely as each crisis presented itself. He must be
continually awake to avoid any one of a thousand possible mischances.
The holes and ice on the road, his skidding car, the cars passing in
the same and opposite directions, the cars in front and behind, the
cars broken down on the sides of the road--all these and many other
things he had to consider before using brake or throttle in making his
way along. Often snow and sleet storms were added to make driving more
difficult. Objects six feet away were completely invisible, and it was
only by watching the trees along the side of the road that one could
attempt to steer.
I was connected with the _Service des Autos_ as a driver in Section N{o}
2 of the Field Service of the American Ambulance of Neuilly. We had
the usual French Section of twenty ambulances and one staff car, but,
unlike the other Sections, we had only one man to a car. There were
two officers, one the Chief of Section, Walter Lovell, a graduate of
Harvard University and formerly a member of the Boston Stock Exchange;
and George Roeder, Mechanical Officer, in charge of the supply of
parts and the repair of cars. Before the war, he was a promising
bacteriologist in the Rockefeller Institute. Our Section was one of
five which compose the Field Service of the American Ambulance, and are
located at various points along the front from Dunkirk to the Vosges.
The general direction of the Field Service is in the hands of A. Piatt
Andrew, formerly professor at Harvard and Assistant Secretary of the
United States Treasury. He has organized the system by which volunteers
and funds are obtained in America, and is the responsible link between
the work of the Service and the will of the French authorities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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