FRANCE: Ambulances from America

When Oyster Bay and Chevy Chase were champing impatiently at Woodrow Wilson’s “watchful waiting,” the most popular sport of U. S. college boys and prep-school seniors was to join the Lafayette Escadrille or drive an ambulance for the Allies. Quentin Roosevelt flew a plane, and lesser hotbloods like Ernest Hemingway piloted Model T Fords. From more than 100 colleges and universities and nearly every State went 2,500 volunteers to work for American Field Service, serve on every front, retrieve half a million wounded in their bouncing little trucks, collect more than 250 medals.

When World War II came, veterans of the American Field Service, now solid, paunchy citizens, rallied 1,700 strong to the call of energetic Stephen Gallatti, assistant in the last war to Founder A. Piatt Andrew, to resume business. They pitched in, raised funds to send off 38 men, 6 ¾-ton Chevrolet trucks for duty in France, although only 20 ambulances are in the field so far. Their most prominent recruit to date: Cinemactor Robert Montgomery, who last week joined up.

Another group of American ex-servicemen organized the American Volunteer Ambulance Corps, collected funds in France and the U. S., enrolled such eminent supporters as Ambassador William Bullitt, General John J. Pershing, Author Louis Bromfield, Banker Frank A. Vanderlip Jr., Mrs. Seton Porter. All told A. V. A. C. had 75 men, 66 Chevrolets at the front last week, including one donated by the New York Stock Exchange, another by the Broadway cast of Life With Father. Forty-four more A. V. A. C. ambulances are in France, will soon go into action. Third such unit was the Anglo-American Ambulance Corps of Cannes, which though under Lord Derby’s presidency was sparked by two lively Americans. Philip Christopher Kauffman (whose grandfather helped found the Washington Star) and Francis James, who also used to live in Washington.

Ambulance drivers, almost all of whom paid their own expenses, were assigned to General Headquarters as fast as their equipment could be got ready. When the Germans broke through along the Meuse, some were given emergency jobs evacuating women and children. One group of four American Field Service men, led by Donald Q. Coster* of Montreal, last week despite warnings dashed back into Amiens for another rescue, fell into the hands of advancing German tank units. A second, part of the American Volunteer Ambulance Corps’s John J. Pershing Section, answered Anne Morgan’s urgent call for help in evacuating civilians from the Ardennes, were last seen somewhere north of German-occupied Rethel. At week’s end, in addition to Lawrence A. Jump, reported killed last fortnight near Sarreguemines, eight young American drivers were missing, two others were wounded.

* Last winter he inserted advertisements in Montreal papers stating he was not imposter F. Donald Coster of McKesson & Robbins fame.