American Field Service

The Early Years: Ambulance Drivers and French Fellowships

In August 1914, members of the American colony in Paris organized a military hospital to provide medical care to the French wounded. Other Americans residing in France volunteered to transport French casualties from the fields of battle to the military hospital near Paris. The “American Ambulance motor corps,” an extension of the military hospital, provided more rapid vehicles for transporting the wounded than had the traditional mule-drawn carts. The drivers and ambulances became known as the American Ambulance Field Service. Their ranks were increased by vigorous recruiting and fund-raising efforts of supporters in the United States.

One of the early drivers, A. Piatt Andrew, was the force behind the official founding and shaping of the motor corps into the AFS. Andrew had been assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury and treasurer of the American Red Cross. During World War I and until his death in 1937, he served as inspector general of the AFS, its chief administrator. The organization was financed by civilians, staffed and run by volunteers. The young World War I ambulance drivers, carrying the wounded from battlefields to dressing stations, witnessed suffering and sacrifice, the horror and human cost of war. Ultimately, more than 2,400 World War I volunteers served, 127 of whom were killed either while serving as ambulance drivers or, in some cases, after completing their ambulance service tour of duty, as participants in active military service.

After World War I, the organization began sponsoring fellowships for American and French youth to study in each other's countries. The American Field Service Fellowships for French Universities was established in [Page 32]1919 to perpetuate the affection for France shared by AFS rank-and-file members and leaders. American scholars were provided opportunities to live and work in France; French scholars studying in the United States were afforded comparable opportunities. The hope had been to endow 127 fellowships in memory of the ambulance drivers killed during the war; such endowment proved impossible to fund, however. Nevertheless, between the two world wars, the organization succeeded in granting 222 scholarships to American and French graduate students, 24 of whom had been World War I ambulance drivers.

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