13
American ambulance
AMERICAN AMBULANCE
The American Field Service (AFS), or the American Ambulance Field Service as it was first called, was a volunteer organization of ambulance drivers for the French Army before the United States joined the war. The AFS traces back to the American Ambulance Hospital established in 1914 by rich Americans living in Paris. In April 1915, A. Piatt Andrew, former director of the U.S. Mint and a volunteer at the American Ambulance Hospital, convinced the French military to allow some of the Hospital’s ambulance units to serve closer to the front. Instead of transporting wounded from train stations in Paris, the ambulance drivers in the new units drove to and from dressing stations near the battlefields over shell torn roads, sometime in the line of fire. The Ford Model T ambulance could handle the rough terrain though. The Ford Model T ambulance, built on the Ford Model T light truck chassis, was the first choice of the French High Commission in charge of medical affairs. The truck’s lightness, durability and ease earned it a superior rating in field use. The French ordered 2400 ambulances and the U.S. an additional 5,340. American ambulance diver William Seabrook wrote that “our Fords could go over shell-pitted roads and torn terrain.” In 1917, it was added into the United States Army Medical Department, renamed the United State Army Ambulance Service and continued serving the French for the rest of the war. While there were other American volunteer ambulance groups in Europe at the time, Andrew’s American Ambulance Field Service (later to be known as the American Field Service”) became the largest.