Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) THE WHITE ROAD OF MYSTERY THE NOTE-BOOK OF AN AMERICAN AMBULANCIER [Illustration: AMERICAN FIELD SERVICE, SECTION XXXI _at 21 rue Raynouard, Paris_ _The author is standing the seventh from the right_] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE WHITE ROAD OF MYSTERY THE NOTE-BOOK OF AN AMERICAN AMBULANCIER BY PHILIP DANA ORCUTT AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE _Section_ XXXI _Illustrated with Photographs_ NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 1918 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ COPYRIGHT, 1918 BY JOHN LANE COMPANY THE·PLIMPTON·PRESS NORWOOD·MASS·U·S·A ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TO SECTION THIRTY-ONE TO ALL OTHER SECTIONS OF THE AMERICAN FIELD SERVICE AND TO THOSE WHO HAVE MADE THEM POSSIBLE ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Preface THE position of the ambulance driver at the front is much the same as that of the grouse in open season: every one has a chance to take a shot at him and he has no opportunity for retaliation. That is why so many drivers entered aviation or artillery at the expiration of their term of enlistment of six months. This transferring came to an end when the American Government took over the Ambulance Service. From then on, all drivers have been of necessity enlisted men. The old American Ambulance, later called the American Field Service, was a purely volunteer organization, and had no connection with any government. It was made up of American citizens who left civil life, paying their own expenses and furnishing their own equipment, and in many cases their ambulances. These men, feeling that America owed a debt to France, banded together to form the original American Ambulance Service, which they laid on the altar of their devotion to a true and great cause.