The American Ambulance in Paris, 1914-1917 Part III: The American Ambulance Field Service.

Abstract

As the war progressed, the American Ambulance in Paris evolved. In 1915, it opened the Convalescent Home, an 80-bed rehabilitation unit at nearby Saint Cloud. Most of the patients admitted had gunshot-induced single or multiple fractures of the extremities, which often required long-term rehabilitation. The standard treatments were “mechanotherapy (early mobilization), massage, and electricity (electrical stimulation).” That same year, two smaller military hospitals were set up closer to the front lines: a mobile field hospital and another Ambulance. The 108-bed mobile hospital, purchased from the American War Department, was intended for a much different type of warfare than encountered on the Western Front. Early in the war, the battles of movement turned into battles of position. Trench warfare became the norm, and although the equipment of the hospital could be carried on 4 trucks and erected in several hours, it remained stationary at Pagny-sur-Meuse in the Lorraine region of eastern France. The Ambulance was at Juilly, 30 miles northeast of Paris. It was a fully equipped 225-bed hospital located in the 17th century College of Juilly. All transportation of patients among of the facilities of American Ambulance was done by the American Ambulance Field Service (AAFS). At first, the function of the Service was to collect the sick and wounded arriving in Paris in hospital trains from the front and transport them to Neuilly and other treatment facilities from the main collection point at La Chapelle, but like the Ambulance, it transformed as the war progressed. The AAFS was staffed by volunteers, mostly students from preparatory schools and universities in the United States. They were upper class, wealthy, and filled with enthusiasm for the French cause. Their humanitarian impulse was well seasoned with curiosity and the youthful quest for adventure and glory. Until August 15, 1914, the Service was transporting patients in eight donated “town and touring cars.” On that date, the Ford Automobile Company of Paris gave the Service 10 new Model Fords chassis, which were fitted by the hospital staff with “ambulance bodies.” On September 9, these vehicles went to Meaux, 25 miles northeast of Paris, to transport patients wounded in the Battle of the Marne. In 1915, the scope and range of the operations of the Field Service changed radically when A. Piatt Andrew, a Harvard economics professor turned politician, became the Inspector General. Andrew had entered the Service as a driver, but he was soon disappointed just providing taxi service well behind the battlefront. When discipline problems arose among the volunteers—excessive drinking and failure to follow rules—the President of the Board of the American Hospital, Roger Bacon, without the consent of the Transportation Committee of the Ambulance, appointed Andrew in March 1915 to re-establish order in the ranks. Andrew’s vision for the Service, however, was broader than his mandate. He believed that it should operate much closer to the front lines, as did the English field services. Andrew chose a highly motivated and disciplined group of drivers to staff Section Z, which began operations in Alsace in April 1915. Their performance was so impressive that within a month, Captain Aime Doumenc, the director of transportation services in the French General Headquarters at Chantilly, signed an agreement to integrate the entire Field Service into the French system. The American Ambulance viewed this accord as an unauthorized action that threatened its professed neutrality, and tried to reign in Andrew. Unsuccessful, the Transportation Committee of the American Ambulance cut funding and material assistance to the AAFS. During July 1916, Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, a patron of the American Ambulance and board member of the American Hospital, seemed to have resolved the impasse between Andrew and the American Ambulance by guaranteeing the operating expenses of the Service, and arranging for its administrative transfer to the American Hospital. A short time later, however, the Hospital refused the Field Service the use of its facilities. The AAFS relocated to an estate owned by friends of Andrew in the Passy suburb of Paris. Andrew consolidated his program by aggressively recruiting and fund-raising through the American Fund for French Wounded that had doi: 10.7205/MILMED-D-15-00407