Inventory of American Field Service Ambulance Driver Diary 19 May-9 June 1915

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Inventory of American Field Service Ambulance Driver Diary Ragan MSS 00109., 19 May-9 June 1915

Inventory of American Field Service Ambulance Driver Diary 19 May-9 June 1915

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/tamucush/00109/00109-P.html

From internal evidence in the text, the diary's writer was apparently an ambulance driver with the American Field Service ambulance service, Section Two, based in Pont-á-Mousson, France, during the early part of World War 1. This ambulance service was formed in April 1915 by A. Piatt Andrew. The diary begins with the driver's departure from Paris, to report to the Bureau, or main Section office of the service, at Pont-á-Mousson, which he often abbreviates to Pont. in diary entries. The diary's driver is often under fire, either while driving the roads among convoys, or in the towns being shelled, and, on a least one occasion, even at his billet, called a caserne. He is also clearly interested in becoming an aviator, and visits a French aviation field with a friend from the American Field Service during his time off. Description of German prisoners in the town square, serious casualties called couchés, episodes of shelling, the hazards of evacuating casualties under fire, as well as the daily life of an American soldier serving in World War I before the official entrance of the United States, is terse and vivid. The narrative presents an interesting contrast of intense activity and intermittent loafing in the French towns and countryside, including a tour of such battle areas as Bois-le-Prêtre, the site of the First Battle of the Marne. The entries end abruptly with 9 June 1915. The shiny dark brown paper-covered diary measures 17 x 10 cm., with 26 of its 40 blue-ruled pages filled with entries handwritten in ink. Although found inserted into an issue of the published between April 1918 and January 1919 and donated to the repository by General George Stratemeyer, the diary is neither labeled, nor signed, and the entries are dated 19 [May]-9 June 1915. A newspaper clipping is slipped into the diary, dated 1873 by hand in ink, probably from a British newspaper, which contains a poem, , on which corrections to the text have been made in ink. The 25 p. paper transcript was made in February 2002 by Aletha Andrew, who processed the collection in the repository. Kelly Field eagle To Loch Skene

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