Riding the Night: Inside The American Ambulance Field Service ( WWI – 1916)

“Shells from the enemy rush overhead…bursting in a village which lies on the road home. They are strafing the village; the cars have a fair chance of being blown to pieces; it is as dark as pitch and the road will be full of new shell-holes. The drivers start their engines and turn the cars for home; the rain drives in their face as they go, and along the road in front of them the shells flash at intervals…” – John Masefield

The American Colony in Paris took decisive action to aid soldiers during the summer of 1914 as German troops relentlessly advanced into France with unwavering aggression. There was a very crucial need for an independent yet dedicated medical evacuation service as the intensity of the war grew into impossible levels of chaos. The injured couldn’t get medical care.

This led to the establishment of the American Field Service. A volunteer ambulance initiative that would transport the wounded from the front lines to safer medical facilities and hospitals in the rear. Those injured in the front lines now had access to receive necessary assistance. These ambulance drivers played a pivotal role in transporting the soldiers to safety at the risk of their own lives. The organizations had expanded into over two thousand volunteer members by early 1915.

Among these brave volunteers were young college students, poets, writers, actors, and artists. Ernest Hemingway himself, a famous author renowned for his novel A Farewell to Arms was even an ambulance driver serving throughout the war. This organization quickly become operational expanding its scope beyond the Western Front in the first months of existence.

It is important to note that the volunteers not only came from diverse backgrounds but also bore the financial burden of their own transportation and living expenses. Their commitment is a testament to their dedication in providing front-line medical services amidst the brutal realities of war. The American Field Service’s operation had an unbelievable amount of support that allowed them to expand to other critical battlefronts including Italy, Greece, Serbia, and Albania.

In today’s post I’m going to share an eyewitness account from British poet John Masefield that was first published in Harper’s Magazine in 1917. His extremely vivid narrative offers a unique perspective on the experiences of ambulance drivers. Masefield’s gripping portrayal of life on the front lines provides a firsthand account of the harrowing reality of war-torn landscapes, being under the constant danger of fire, and the emotional toll of witnessing the war’s devastation.

Masefield describes the battlefield from an open vantage point. The Ambulance drivers could see miles of destruction as the war went on. The scene is marked by the lights of gunfire rising and falling across the sky. Distant explosions boomed as they detonated with the screech of incoming shells coming right after. The account is a somber and powerful look at the human cost of war. The grim task of transporting the wounded forever seared into the minds of these volunteers.

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The following is an account from British poet John Masefield, who served with the American Ambulance Field Service. He vividly recounts his experiences as twilight envelops the Front, providing a brief respite from enemy fire for the ambulance drivers. His narrative unfolds as his ambulance approaches the battle-scarred landscape:

In this open space the drivers can see for some miles over the battlefield. Over it all, as far as the eye can see, the lights are rising and falling. There is not much noise, but a sort of mutter of battle with explosions now and then. Very far away, perhaps ten miles away, there is fighting, for in that quarter the sky glimmers as though with summer lightning; the winks and flashes of the guns shake and die across the heaven. One side of the road is screened with burlap…

Stretched upon posts for half a mile together; otherwise daytime traffic on it would be seen by the enemy. Some of the burlap is in rags and some of the posts are broken; the wreck of a cart lies beside the road, and in the road itself are roundish patches of new stones where shell-holes have been mended, perhaps a few minutes before.

Just overhead as the car passes comes a blasting, shattering crash which is like sudden death. Then another and another follow, one on the other, right overhead. On the ground above, the slope of the little hill, a battery of soixante-quinze guns has just opened fire. On the tail of each crash comes the crying of the shell, passing overhead like a screech-owl, till it is far away in the enemy lines, where it bursts. Another round follows, but by this time the ambulance is a hundred yards away…

and now, on the heels of the affront, comes the answer. Rather to the right and very near in the stillness of the moonlight an enemy battery replies, one, two, three guns in as many seconds, a fourth gun a little late, and the shells come with a scream across and burst behind the ambulances, somewhere near the battery. Then a starlight goes up.

Near enough to dazzle the eyes, and near enough, one would think, to show the ambulance to the world; and as the starlight goes down a second round comes from the battery aimed God knows at what, but so as to arroser the district. The noise of the engine stifles the noise of the shells, but above the engines one shell’s noise is heard.

The screech of its rush comes very near, there is a flash ahead, a burst, and the patter of falling fragments. Long afterward, perhaps six seconds afterward, a tiny piece of shell drops upon the ambulance. Another shell bursts behind the car, and another on the road in front; the car goes round the new shell-hole and passes on. This is ‘the front.’

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Two hundred and fifty yards away, a seventh part of a mile, two minutes’ walk, are the enemy lines. Dead ahead, in what looks like a big rubbish-heap, such as one may see in suburbs where builders have been putting up a row of villas, is the Poste de Secours. The rubbish-heap was once a farm, though no man, not even the farmer, could now say where his buildings lay. The drivers go down the sloping path into the cellars. The cellar roof has been propped.

Heaped with layers of timber balks interspersed with sand-bags, and the cellar itself, shored up, is like a mine. It is a vast place with several rooms in it, from one of which, strongly lighted, comes the sound of voices and of people moving. Looking round near at hand, as the eye becomes accustomed to the darkness, one sees some loaded stretchers on the floor near the doorway. Three dead men, who were alive an hour ago, lie there awaiting burial. They were all hit by one torpedo, says the stretcher-bearer, these and five others, but these three died on their way to the Poste.

Some say that the dead look as though they were asleep, but no sleep ever looked like death. Presently the sick arrive, haggard and white, but able to walk, and the gathering breaks up and the ambulances are free to go. The moon is blotted by this time; it is darker and beginning to rain, the men say. On leaving the operating-room, one hears again as a real thing the scream of the rush of the big shells, the thump of the bursts, and the crash of the great guns.

The stretchers are passed into the ambulances, the sick are helped on to seats, they are covered with blankets, and the doors are closed. It is much darker now and the rain has already made the ground sticky; and with the rain the smell of corruption has become heavier, and the ruin is like what it is-a graveyard laid bare. Shells from the enemy rush overhead…

bursting in a village which lies on the road home. They are strafing the village; the cars have a fair chance of being blown to pieces; it is as dark as pitch and the road will be full of new shell-holes. The drivers start their engines and turn the cars for home; the rain drives in their faces as they go, and along the road in front of them the shells flash at intervals.

Lighting the tree-stumps. These drivers (there are now, and have been, some hundreds of them) are men of education. They are the very pick and flower of American life, some of them professional men, but the greater number of them young men on the threshold of life, lads just down from college or in their last student years. All life lies before them in their own country. But they have put that aside for an idea, and have come to help France in her hour of need.

Two of them died and many have been maimed for France, and live a life of danger and risk death nightly. To this company of splendid and gentle and chivalrous Americans be all thanks and greetings from friends and allies of sacred France.

SOURCE: RIDING THE NIGHT BY JOHN MASEFIELD – HARPER’S MAGAZINE

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