Douthitt, Jack Wells

JACK WELLS DOUTHITT, of Florence, Alabama, was killed on April 20th, while serving with the French Unit of the American Field Service. Jack was ordered to evacuate four seriously wounded men in the village of Boblingen, which was partly surrounded as the result of a German counter-attack. He did not report back to his post and on April 21st, he was found dead beside his ambulance, which had been blown up by a German bazooka. Jack had served with the British Eighth during the desert campaign, in Italy, and with the American Fifth on the Anzio Beach-head, later transferring to the French Section of the AFS. He was absolutely fearless and devoted to the Service in which he volunteered.

__ AFS Letters, No. 37

In the middle of the night, just after everyone had crawled into his beddingroll, a call came in for 5 ambulances needed forward. The Germans at the Lauter River were fighting hard and French casualties increased. The 5 cars (Fred Blow and Victor Downing, Brinton Young and Eli Rock, Mark Ethridge and Don Elberfeld, Jack Douthitt, and Carl Harris and Bill Wallace) moved off to Soufflenheim in the dark, following a speedy Frenchman in a jeep.

On 2 April, Blow, Douthitt, Elberfeld, and Nodine were sent up to an advance post on the Rhine at Germersheim. The next day the Section crossed the Rhine "with the French in their bridgehead at Speyer," D. N. Elberfeld wrote. [...] During this short period the uncertainty of where the enemy was along the fluid and generally invisible front cost the Section two casualties and inspired some extraordinary courage: C. B. Alexander and J. W. Douthitt were killed by enemy action.

Jack Wells Douthitt was killed in action, while with the 20th Alpine Chasseurs. Early on the morning of 21 April 1945, he was asked to take a seriously wounded man from Boblingen to Herrenberg (about 15 miles southwest of Stuttgart), over a road thought but not known for sure to be open. Fully aware of the danger, Douthitt undertook the mission. As he drove around a curve in the road, he was fired on from ahead by a bazooka. Having no time to turn, he stepped on the gas. As he came opposite the foxhole from which the first shot had come he was fired on again. He was immediately killed. The ambulance left the road, overturned, and burned, the occupants being thrown clear.

__ George Rock, Chapter 14. "Victory 3. The Return to France (March 1944- July 1945)" History of the American Field Service, 1920-1955. New York, 1956.