Ambulance No. 10. Personal Letters Of A Driver At The Front [Illustrated Edition]

By Leslie Buswell

“Letters describing the daily life and activities of a section of the voluntary “American Ambulance Field Service in France”, operating over a period of four months in 1915 in Lorraine in support of the French.
These letters were written by a member of the American Ambulance Field Service in France, a voluntary organisation that came into existence soon after the outbreak of war and in 1916 had over 200 motor ambulances. They were driven by young American volunteers, most of them graduates of American universities, who got no salary but their living expenses were paid. The ambulances were grouped in sections of twenty to thirty vehicles, attached to the French Armies and carried the wounded between the front and Army Hospitals within the Army zone. They were particularly useful in Alsace where their light but powerful vehicles were able to cope with the steep mountain passes which French motor ambulances could not manage. The section in which the writer of these letters served and whose daily life and activities he describes was located in Lorraine. The letters cover a period of four months from June to October 1915 and were first published in 1915 under the title With the American Ambulance Field Service in France, changed to Ambulance No 10 for this 1916 edition, purely for the sake of brevity. There is plenty of action to read about in this correspondence and there are interesting photographs.”-N&M Print Version.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lucknow Books
• Release date: Jun 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781782891772

Leslie Buswell

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Text originally published in 1911 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2013, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

Personal Letters of a Driver at the Front

Printed only for private distribution,

January 1916.

By Leslie Buswell

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 2

PREFACE 4

INTRODUCTION 5

WITH THE AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE IN FRANCE 7

AMERICAN AMBULANCE, June 17th. 7

Saturday. 9

June 19th. 9

Sunday. 9

Monday. 11

Thursday. 12

PONT-À-MOUSSON, June 25th. 13

Monday, the 28th. 15

PONT-À-MOUSSON, July 2d. 16

Saturday. 16

Monday, July 5th. 16

Tuesday, 5 P.M. 17

Thursday, 4 P. M. 19

Sunday. 19

Monday. 20

PONT-À-MOUSSON, July 16th. 21

July 15th. 23

PONT-À-MOUSSON, July 24, 1915. 24

PONT-À-MOUSSON July 26, 1915. 26

July 29, 1915. 26

July 30th. 27

August 2d. 27

August 3d. 29

1 1/2 hrs. later. 29

PONT-À-MOUSSON, August 15, 1915. 30

August 19th. 32

August 20th. 32

August 23d. 32

August 30th. 33

September 4th. 34

September 6th. 35

September 8th. 35

September 14th. 36

Sunday. 37

Monday. 37

September 23d. 38

September 29th. 40

September 30th. 40

October 10th. 40

October 13th. 41

NAMES AND ADDRESSES OF THE MEN IN THE FIELD SERVICE OF THE AMERICAN AMBULANCE IN AUGUST, 1915. 43

ILLUSTRATIONS 46

PREFACE

THESE letters, according to ordinary ethics in such matters, should not, perhaps, be published. They were merely intended as tributes of friendship and remembrance. Casually written—in pencil often—at moments between duties, with no thought of their being destined to any further purpose than that distance and absence might count a little less through the pictures they would give of a day's work far away.

Excepting that here and there in each letter a few details quite personal have been omitted, and of course the names of places sometimes changed, they are untouched. Their author has had no chance to revise them, nor, it must be confessed, has his consent to their printing been asked. Knowing him, there seemed little likelihood of his believing them worthy of special attention; not at least without a correspondence of persuasion, and much loss of time. Only the exigency of the hour and a conviction of their worth have led me to take this step. If they give to those who may now read as clear a vision as they have given me of the chivalrous work our young American volunteers are doing in France, they will have achieved something. If occasionally, some reader—grateful for this proof that our country is contributing so worthy a part to the heroism of to-day—should feel inspired to do what he is able toward the encouragement and continuation of this work, these letters will have served a high purpose. The knowledge that a possibility so worthwhile would ultimately outweigh with my friend any personal consideration is justification of the liberty taken—and of this book.

—Perhaps for the time and effort the writer of these records so generously spent for friendship's sake in the midst of hard and hazardous days he may find recompense in the realization that, aside from the pleasure which their coming meant to one who looked for them, they may bring much benefit to the Service he so valiantly describes, and through that service, to thousands of men and women whose happiness death might otherwise have destroyed.

H. D. S.

INTRODUCTION

FOR many years before the war there existed at Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, a semi-philanthropic institution supported by Americans and known as the American Hospital. At the outbreak of the war this institution instantly and naturally became the rallying-point for Americans who loved France and wanted to help care for her wounded soldiers. Within a few weeks it was evident, however, that larger quarters must be found. A splendid new school building, which was rapidly nearing completion in the neighborhood, was rented; its large, well-lighted, and well-ventilated rooms were transformed into hospital wards, operating-rooms, dormitories, and offices; a multitude of doctors, surgeons, and nurses were brought over from the United States; and thus the American Ambulance Hospital in the Lycée Pasteur, with accommodations for more than six hundred wounded soldiers, came into being. Soon the generosity of another American friend of France made possible a second American Ambulance Hospital, and the venerable College of Juilly, located about thirty miles east of Paris, was steam-fitted, electric-lighted and plumbed, and made over into a hospital for about two hundred additional wounded, with distinguished American surgeons in charge.

From the outset it was clear that the saving of soldiers' lives depended quite as much upon the quick transportation of the wounded as upon their surgical treatment, and in September, 1914, when the battle front surged close to Paris, a dozen automobiles given by Americans, hastily extemporized into ambulances, and driven by American volunteers, ran back and forth night and day between the western end of the Marne Valley and Paris. This was the beginning of the American Ambulance Field Service with which the following letters have to do. During the autumn and winter that followed many more cars were given and many more young Americans volunteered, and when the battle front retired from the vicinity of Paris, sections of motor ambulances were detached from the hospitals at Neuilly and Juilly and became more or less independent units attached to the several French armies, serving the dressing-stations and Army hospitals within the Army zone. To-day more than a hundred such ambulances given and driven by American friends of France are carrying wounded French soldiers along the very fighting front in Belgium and France.

In Belgium and Northern France, where the American Ambulance Field Service has had an important Section since the early months of the war, the valiant service rendered during the second battle of the Yser, and during the many bombardments from long-range guns in and about Dunkirk, has attracted official recognition from the highest officers in the Army. At the time of the prolonged battles in the vicinity of Ypres in May, General Putz wrote that the American Section had, by working five nights and days without interruption, assured the evacuation of the hospitals in Everdinghe, though under continual shell fire which covered all of the roads in the neighborhood and even the hospitals themselves. I cannot praise too highly, he added, the courage and devotion of which the men in your Section have given evidence, and I ask you to transmit to them my congratulations and my thanks for the great physical effort which they have so generously made and the signal services which they have rendered.

In the section of Alsace which France has definitely recovered from Germany, the American Ambulance Field Service has now the only automobile ambulances and they are performing a service which no other automobile ambulances could perform. Because of the lightness and power of our little cars, and because we are willing to use them up in this service