American Ambulances Go To War скачать в хорошем качестве

American Ambulances Go To War

World War One was the first mechanized war and American volunteers pressed into service the automobile. The new warfare which turned verdant fields into bogs of shell-pummeled muck presented a who new problem. Traditional horse ambulances and hand litters no longer worked. The fighting and the terrain challenged the endurance of the litter bearer and the horse. They could not keep up with the damage on the battlefield, carry the wounded from the field to dressing stations and evacuation stations to the rear. One idea that did work was the American Field Service, created by concerned Americans living in Paris in 1915, two years before America entered the war. Within a year, the AFS had been assigned to the French front and broken down into three corps of 20 ambulances, each staffed with nearly 400 American volunteers. Among them, Ernest Hemingway who would write his famous "A Farewell to Arms" about his experience as a driver and his romance with Hadley Richardson, a volunteer AFS nurse and graduate of Bellevue Hospital. The success of AFS and its drivers was due in large part to the Ford ambulance, shipped in parts from the United States at a cost of about $350 each. They needed an ambulance that was geared low so it could maneuver in mud. The Ford ambulance was designed to carry four wounded men but it had the ability to carry seven or eight in an emergency. It was called a goat and a mechanical flea, but it serves a great purpose over the course of the war, it was used to evacuate over a half million men. There were little more than 2,100 used by the end of the war. Our Friend France S103