WW II – France

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Revival

 

"Stephen Galatti heads the AFS, he runs the AFS, he is the AFS. It was his sincere belief in the ambulance service that revived it..."

__ George Rock. Chapter XVII. History of the American Field Service, 1920-1955. New York 1956.

 

 Prelude

The Pavilion of American Volunteers of 1914-1918
was inaugurated at the Museum of Blérancourt on September 11, 1938.

The Sixty-seventh French infantry regiment came to Blérancourt to take part. It was a striking fact that came to mind at the sight of these young lads of military age, marching and going through drill in a spirited way, that none of them were born when our cars were rolling on the French highways. [...] There was more than these young poilus and the display of flags to call the war to mind, for on the day when these ceremonies were held, thoughts of the possibility of that war being repeated were in everybody's mind. Reservists of France had been called out to man the Maginot Line in case the Czechoslovakian crisis should precipitate a call to arms. The newspapers were full of war scare, and many of the prominent persons who had expected to come to Blérancourt had been obliged to remain in Paris because of the tenseness of the international situation.

__ Lansing Warren, Bulletin of the American Field Service Association, no. 19, June 1939, p. 4.

I should above all like to express---and here I do so very seriously---speaking as I am before the Friends of the Museum of Blérancourt who have known them, my full gratitude--- most specially to three eminent persons of the American Field Service.

To Piatt Andrew first of all, whom I did not at all know personally, since he died several weeks before my arrival, but who had decided on this appeal for a French scholarship holder; a picture of his bust, identical to that which you will find on the last page of the Blérancourt brochure, has also been gracing my album of personal photos for the past 35 years.

Then to Stephen Galatti , who took over from Andrew in a great-hearted way which all those who knew him will remember--- doubtless including many of you right here in this room.

And finally to William de Ford Bigelow, who was in a way my patron in Boston during the year 1935-1937, and who, on September 11, 1938, was the AFS spokesman at the ceremonies to inaugurate the American Field Service Museum at Blérancourt---ceremonies which I was able to attend, by special permission---in the midst of the Munich crisis, although only a young second lieutenant on the Lorraine border---thanks to a special favor granted by the Commander.

__ Maurice Pérouse, "Memories of the American Field Service", January 27, 1971, Blérancourt.

 

1938

In 1938 Hitler used Germany's rearmament to drive diplomatic aggression, encouraged by the appeasement policies of France and Britain. With the invasion of Poland in 1939 came the roar of bombers, the roll of tanks, and the rumble of armies ---sounds Europe would hear for six years.

... it was, I think, impossible for a member of the tolerant British Parliament to assess at their true strength the violent passions that were tearing France apart in 1937-1938. We had been in Paris during the February riots of '36 and had sensed the dangerous tension in the capital when Colonel de la Rocque's Croix de Feu clashed with the Communists, but we failed like most Britishers to estimate properly the disastrous moral effect on the propertied classes of the Front Populaire with its stay in strikes, its forty-hour week and its congés payés. Nor could we have imagined the lengths to which the Daladier government would go in order to avoid a Communist revolution.

The truth is that my husband loved France too well to acknowledge what was happening to her or believe that she had exchanged her old fear of Germany for the new prefabricated fear of the Communist bogey.

It didn't occur to us seriously that the French middle class might have made up its mind after the Blum regime to accept any compromise with Hitler rather than run the risk of a revolution of the left. Munich had done nothing to enlighten us in London. How could it when our own government was as ready as the French to sell out Czechoslovakia? We were amongst those in England who knew that in spite of that futile betrayal a point would be reached when appeasement must stop. Daladier's government was weak, so was our own. We took for granted that both were aware that war was inevitable.

We should have known. The writing on the wall was clear enough for those who wished to read. Wishful thinking made us blind. B. and I paid what was to be our last visit to Paris before the war during the summer of '39 expecting to be welcomed as comrades about to share in a perilous enterprise. Our reception by old friends was distinctly chilly. The explanation offered came as a shock. "It is because you are dragging us into your horrible war."

__ Mary Borden. [Mrs. Spears] Journey Down a Blind Alley. New York: Harper & Bros, 1946.

In June of 1939 I visited the United States, where I remained for several weeks conferring with surgeons and visiting clinics. I was too absorbed in personal and professional affairs to pay close attention to the critical international situation. When I sailed for France, my wife remaining in America, I had no suspicion that matters would come to an immediate head. As a matter of fact, there had been a war scare every summer for the past few years, and there seemed no reason to believe that this crisis would not also pass. When the catastrophe finally occurred, the news eluded me for several hours.

On the morning of September 3, 1939, I had gone to Nantes on personal business. I had finished and was on my way back to Paris, passing through Saint-Germain-en-Laye, when I became aware of the driver of a Citroën, close behind me, honking his horn. Reaching a point where the street widened, I pulled my car aside to let the Citroën pass. Instead of doing so, however, it drew up in front of me and stopped. A young Frenchman jumped out, said something to the woman at the wheel and rushed back to my car.

"Dr. Bove! Are you on your way to Paris?"

"Yes." I tried to place the fellow, but couldn't.

"Will you let me go with you? I'm in a hurry. My wife is sick."

The fellow was in a state of extreme nervousness. I assumed that his wife was dangerously ill, possibly undergoing an operation. When I inquired, he exclaimed, "Oh, no! It's worse than that!"

A peculiar answer. Then I recalled my meeting with the mayor at Nantes. He too had been in a devilish mood, curt and impolite.

"What in the world is wrong with you people this morning?"

He looked at me unbelievingly. "Don't you know? Chamberlain has declared war on the Germans, and Daladier is expected to do likewise."

__ Charles Bove with Dana Thomas. A Paris Surgeon's Story. New York 1956. Chapter Seven.

 

Start-up

After a summer of increasing tension, Britain, and France declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 and World War II had begun. In the United States, lethargy, isolationism, and an attitude of nonintervention were very strong. However, within Field Service circles the determination once again to work for France had been steadily growing, and discussions were well under way before the actual declaration of war.

Among the first to offer their services to Mr. Galatti were W. de Ford Bigelow (SSU 4), Enos Curtin (SSU 2), Roswell Miller (TMU 526), C. V. S. Mitchell (Formation Harjes), A. Pendleton Taliaferro, Jr. (SSU 19), and William H. Wallace, Jr. (SSU 4-28). Shortly after the declaration of war, Mr. Bigelow was appointed New England representative, with Headquarters in Boston. Mr. Miller donated office space for the national Headquarters in New York City as well as its administration expenses and his own considerable efforts. Mr. Mitchell drew up the form of organization to cover the requirements and offered the legal services of his firm. Messrs. Curtin, Miller, Mitchell, and Taliaferro were appointed to the Executive Committee, and their names were signed, jointly with that of Mr. Galatti, to the application for registration with the Department of State (according to the requirements of the Neutrality Law). Mr. Taliaferro filed this application and received Department of State Registration No. 94, which permitted the American Field Service to raise funds for a volunteer ambulance service in France and insured the issuance of passports to any volunteer drivers sponsored by the officials of the organization. The study of ambulance design and construction was assigned to Mr. Wallace. And Lucy MacDonald De Maine (Boston and Paris HQ, and later AFS Association Secretary) was made Secretary of the revived Service.

Several aspects of the revival were made most difficult by the general indifference in the United States to the new war. Donations were hard to get. The only volunteers were a few members of the AFS Association. And even sponsors were reluctant to step forward and offer their names. Owing to the political ramifications of isolationist sentiment expressed by various groups and committees, many important people who had been great supporters of the Field Service in World War I did not feel that they could lend their names for the general AFS committee (although their private acts of kindness greatly assisted the early stages of organization).

The Boston office was from the beginning extremely busy and successful, as was fitting in the American home of the organization. Mr. Bigelow, assisted by H. B. Willis (SSU 2), gathered a group of interested people to form an executive committee with Mr. Bigelow as chairman: Mrs. Charles R. Codman (wife of Charles R. Codman II, SSU 3) as Vice-Chairman, and Roger Griswold (SSU 4), Richard Lawrence (SSU 3), Donald Moffat (SSU 4), and Mr. Willis. In addition, a general committee of sponsors was formed under the chairmanship of Alan Forbes, president of the State Street Trust Company. It included many prominent Bostonians associated with the old Field Service either as drivers, committee members, or patrons. The first ambulance donation was made by Mrs. Charles G. Weld, who, with members of her family, had donated the entire SSU 17 in World War 1. This ambulance, at the suggestion of the Field Service and with Mrs. Weld's consent, was inscribed in memory of Mr. Andrew. Shortly. thereafter an anonymous Boston donation supplied an ambulance that was inscribed in memory of Henry Davis Sleeper,

At the same time, the New York office was soliciting its former supporters. The earliest ambulance donations were those from Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, Mr. and Mrs. Roswell Miller, Miss Edith Scoville, and Hon. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss (who had contributed to the old Service the entire SSU 9). A plaque from one of the ambulances of SSU 9, bearing the inscription "Offert aux défenseurs de la France par Deux Reconnaissants" was returned to the Field Service and later was sent to France for one of the new cars.

In November, William C. Bullitt, United States Ambassador to France, permitted the use of his name as Honorary President of the American Field Service. Mr. Forbes became chairman of the nation-wide General Committee of sponsors. Thomas Hitchcock, Jr., agreed to act as Treasurer. On the General Committee, as on the Boston committee, were many names long associated with the American Field Service. In the United States there were Mrs. Isaac Patch, sister of A. Piatt Andrew; Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss; André de Coppet, whose generosity had in no small measure made the original AFS possible; Mrs. Homer Cage, one of the staunchest supporters in the old days, whose son Homer Gage, Jr., had been a member of SSU 31; Mrs. Paul Moore, who had donated and raised funds for ambulances and was to do so again; S. H. Pell, representing the former Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps; and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, whose affection for the Service had been unceasing through the years.

__ George Rock, "Preparations for World War II" in The History of the American Field Service, New York: Platen Press, 1956.

 

Office

In November a letter went out to all A.F.S. veterans asking each to donate a dollar a month for office expenses (the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway had donated offices). The response was immediate and overwhelming. Phone calls, letters, and telegrams poured in on the modest but efficient office. Men and boys of all ages, occupations, and walks of life clamored to volunteer for active service. Mr. Galatti, pleasant-spoken genial broker and member of the sacrosanct Knickerbocker Club, raced to the helm every afternoon when the Stock Exchange's closing bell rang out, and rarely went home until silence settled over Wall Street and throngs of charwomen were the only occupants of Manhattan's skyscrapers.

Qualifications for enlistment required the volunteers to be American citizens over eighteen and under forty-one (though a few veterans over that age were accepted for headquarters duty). They had to have six or seven hundred dollars to pay their way to France and back, for incidental expenses while there, with enough left over for their personal equipment, all purchased in France-overcoat, breeches, slacks, tunic, cap, and musette. In exceptional cases where the volunteer showed great promise but hadn't sufficient money, someone else was usually found to donate the funds.

The office has one fair-sized outer room with several salvaged desks behind a rail. A couple of girls work at them tirelessly-Louise Williams and Claude Gignoux, only a year ago two of the season's most popular debutantes. In a little bare partitioned office, to the right of the entrance, Dunbar Hinrichs gave the applicants their first interviews.

Mr. Hinrichs recently retired from General Motors and returned to the A.F.S., for which he drove an ambulance in the last war. One night he had run across Galatti at a dinner and asked what he could do to help-yacht-racing, his hobby, didn't seem very important to him any more. The result was a hard and grueling job, which brought him to the offices from his Connecticut estate every morning. With him works Mrs. Harry de Maine, whose husband is the artist (his striking watercolors decorate the office) who drove for the A.F.S. during the last war.

The addition of Hinrichs to the office helped relieve Clarence Mitchell to some extent. Mitchell, who had been conducting the preliminary interviews, is an alert man with a black mustache and keen brown eyes, a partner in the law firm of Choate, Larocque, Mitchell & Ely, counsel to the American Field Service. In 1914, he joined the Formation Harjes at Montdidier and drove an ambulance for six months before returning to finish his law course at Harvard. When he'd kicked the Cambridge dust from his heels, he made for Plattsburg. After being commissioned as captain of cavalry in August, 1917, he was, because of his previous record and ability to "speak French like a native," pitchforked over to France in January, 1918. He was attached to the Group of Armies of the East under General de Castelnau as American liaison officer. Mitchell, Hinrichs, or Galatti, who emerged from the World War a major, warned the applicants of the hardships and dangers day after day, night after night without sleep under the artillery and machine-gun fire and the bombs of the Stukas.

The enlistment was for a minimum of six months. If the applicant was a minor, his parents had to give their written consent. Four references were required, and were scrutinized with care. If accepted, he was ordered to be ready on an hour's notice to sail for France. He was turned over to Mrs. Clarence Hay of Sutton Place, who introduced him to other members of his particular group and saw them off on the boat.

 __ Barbara Hudnut Boston. "AFS Carries On." Town and Country Magazine. July, 1940.

Ambulances had to conform to French specifications. Orders providing for the American Field Service to be attached to the French armies had to be obtained. And, finally, efforts to have AFS agree to amalgamate with other ambulance services in France had to be resisted.

Each problem required its own body of correspondence, and this in turn added further problems. The erratic and usually slow passage of letters between Paris and New York gave poignancy to the cry of "I have received an undated letter from you." And cables, while fast, required such a special literary technique that their sending could provoke: "I may be too verbose a cabler, but I wish you would be a little less chary in this respect." Use of the telephone would have averted letters reading "I hope I was clear on this . . . but I may as well repeat," and also "Destroy this!" But the telephone service had been the war's first casualty.

One of Mr. Hill's earliest concerns was the quality of the volunteers selected by local representatives. Early in September be wrote: "In view of the military control over the volunteer, which you know was in the last war hardly more than symbolic, it is essential that the standard . . . be an extremely high one." In addition to the obvious qualifications, both positive and negative, a special problem was raised by the French preference that men over forty years of age should not be sent. They approved a few exceptions, but when the character of the war was later gauged they asked that the top age be reduced to thirty.

"I think it is very hard for all of us to realize," wrote Mr. Galatti, "that this is a job for volunteers of the same age we were when we went out and that our interest must now lie in trying to further the Service by interesting others to give money . . . feeling that [we] are responsible in having the younger men carry on [the Service]."

In spite of this warning, it was not always easy to convince those rushing to offer their automotive skills to their old Service that they would be of more use exercising their mature talents as heads of local committees.

The light ambulance had been the trade-mark and almost the invention of the Field Service and it was what the French asked again to have supplied. Mr. Wallace, with the technical advice and full co-operation of General Motors, selected a light-truck chassis to be knocked down and sent to France for reassembly. In January 1940 he went to Paris to arrange with French "carrossiers" for building the 22 bodies for Section I. The chassis reached Paris in the latter part of February, but there was great delay in actual construction---partly because of shortages of different materials, partly because of a muddle of official red tape, and partly because of the increasing mobilization of mechanics. The mobilization of the chief windshield-constructor in the middle of April brought work to a temporary halt, and the last car of Section I was not delivered until 14 May. Although the French army had changed to khaki, the AFS ambulances were painted the same blue-gray they had been in World War I.

The "carrossier" devised a sturdy sliding-channel system of stretcher suspension-capable of being folded vertically in the center of the car when carrying sitting patients. The French were reluctant to authorize this innovation to replace their system of leather straps until comparative tests of the speed of loading and unloading proved that the AFS system saved over two, possibly vital, minutes on each operation. However, because of the delay in approval, only half the first section went to the front with the improved system, thanks to which these ambulances were able to carry far more casualties than the official maximum.

When Mr. Wallace went to Paris, he left J. W. Brant to arrange with General Motors for the floatation of the chassis and for the spare parts. The latter was probably the more difficult task---when you consider that a "reverse idling gear countershaft," sufficiently formidable in English, becomes in French a "pignon de marche arriËre sur arbre secondaire" and a "front spring main leaf" is transformed into a "lame maitresse ressort avant."

The papers necessary to get the American Field Service accredited and into the field were numerous, complicated, and delayed by frequent changes of ministers. The basic "décret-loi" defining the AFS status and the French responsibility to AFS was not promulgated until early February. This had to be implemented by an "arreté d'acceptation," to be issued when all the materiel and men of the section had been obtained. After this had been signed by the offices of War and Foreign Affairs in mid-April, an "instruction" to constitute each section into a unit and to allow the cars military numbers, the French lieutenant to be assigned, and equipment to be drawn---was still needed. This required proof that both men and cars were on hand. The "instruction" for Section I was obtained on 18 April. In a supplement it allowed both the inclusion of 13 men over the age of forty-one and an excess of drivers over the normal establishment---for the express purpose of training men to lead subsequent sections.

__ George Rock, "Preparations for World War II" in The History of the American Field Service, New York: Platen Press, 1956.

 

 Recruits

With the basic organization established, attention could be turned to the specific problems of producing an ambulance service. First the volunteers had to be found. [...]

The American Field Service was not the only ambulance group that had volunteered to help France. Among the others were the Iroquois (from which later came some members of Section 1), the Anglo-American Ambulance at Cannes (organized by Eric Dunstan, for which AFS acted as American agent), and the Oeuvres Françaises des Sections Sanitaires; (a Franco-American organization with considerable backing). In spite of some overtures that the Field Service merge with one or another of these groups, it preferred to stand alone, relying on its good name and its trusted friends. The Franco-American group raised a special problem, as it was connected with the American Hospital, included many old friends of the Service, and was headed by Mme le Maréchal Joffre.

__ George Rock, "Preparations for World War II" in The History of the American Field Service, New York: Platen Press, 1956.

The problem of what I could do best to serve a cause which I felt was my own as well as France's was not so easy to solve. At the American Hospital in Neuilly there was nothing I could do. Perhaps later. Would I fill in an application? Yes. The American Legion, Paris Post, had called for volunteers, but when I went there they did not seem to know what they would do with the men when they got them. There was great confusion, and I filled out another long application blank. Finally the Embassy accepted the use of my car, with me as chauffeur, for odd jobs. This was better than nothing. At least I did not feel so completely useless. I had tried to enlist in the French Army and found it closed to Americans on account of the Neutrality Act. The French were particularly anxious not to displease the United States Government at this point, and had even barred the Foreign Legion to us. [...]

The first American organization that seemed likely to accomplish anything was the Iroquois Ambulance Unit, and I joined that. It was headed by John de la Chesney, a man with charm and ten years' experience in the Foreign Legion, by Steele Powers, who later took out a section of ambulances for the American Legion organization, and Jack Hasey, whose feet were subsequently frozen while he was serving as ambulance driver in Finland. I was to be an honorary member of the committee and go out in command of the second section. A château at Ville d'Avray, near Paris, was lent us by Powers' mother and served as living quarters, while another friend placed his office in town at our disposal.

Volunteer drivers came to the office, were examined and in most cases enrolled. There was no paucity of men anxious to do their humble bit. But money was tight. We couldn't seem to get any. There was a war, yes, but no fighting, therefore no wounded. So why ambulances? The answer to that was hard to find. We continued undiscouraged, taking in men, practising night and day driving through the woods of the château, in and out of "shell" holes that we had dug ourselves, and looking for money. The question of how to feed and warm the boys became more and more acute as winter approached. A few of us had a little money, though not nearly enough to heat the château and keep some thirty-odd appetites satisfied. Eddie, the Negro cook, did his best to make a little go a long way.

About this time both the American Field Service and the American Volunteer Ambulance outfit seemed actually to be making progress. We, on the other hand, were rich in men and still poor in money. While the Iroquois Unit, of which I am proud to have been one of the early members, supplied the core of the personnel for all American sections which saw service on the fronts in France and Finland, we did not have the price of two ambulances deposited with our treasurer. Therefore, with many regrets, we decided to break up and join forces with the more prosperous organizations. For personal reasons a few went to the Field Service, and the remainder to the A. V. A., which was connected with Paris Post of the American Legion.

__ Peter Muir. War Without Music. New York: Scribners 1940. Chapter Two.