11/2/2023 0 Comments Nurses verdun ww1By June of 1917, the expansion of the Field Service and the United States’ entry into the war prompted the Army to federalize the Field Service, forming it into the United States Army Ambulance Corps, and recruitment spiked once again on campuses across the country.Ī photo of Dean Scroogie, of the 591, from Detroit, Michigan. The University of Michigan was no exception, with over 30 students in the Field Service by the end of 1916. Although the vast majority of ambulance drivers came from the nation’s most renowned schools, specifically Harvard and Yale, institutions around the country committed student after student to ambulance duties. Both the American Ambulance Corps and the Field Service chiefly employed college students, graduates, and university faculty in their ambulance divisions, fostering a sense of prestige and genteel tradition around ambulance divisions. While Norton’s American Ambulance Corps was directly affiliated with the American Red Cross, the American Ambulance Field Service, another volunteer ambulance division, chose to be integrated directly within the French Army. The 591 at their training camp in Allentown, Pennsylvania. France awarded Richard Norton the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest decoration for which a foreigner is eligible. By 1917, Norton’s fleet of American automobiles and drivers became recognized for their humanitarian aid. Norton became so dependent upon his automobiles that he was often found writing letters to American industrialists in Detroit, pleading for donations of new vehicles. It became the United States’ first ambulance volunteer unit to serve with the French and the British. With its continual use of the motorized ambulance, Norton’s American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps revolutionized ambulance duties on the front. The first use of motorized ambulances in World War I can be traced to Richard Norton, who organized the first modern ambulance corps in October 1914, just months after the outbreak of war. In response, ambulance services enlisted the help of automobiles. But with artillery continually improving in range and accuracy, battlefield triages, and hospitals were moved further back behind the front than they had been in previous wars, exacerbating the load faced by already strained horse-carriage ambulances. Ambulance drivers drove their wagons and carriages up to the front lines to transport the wounded back to the safety of the nurses and doctors in the triages. ![]() ![]() American ambulances on their way to Villers, from Reims.įor soldiers who were wounded in the first few weeks of World War I, the first responders were often the ambulance units.
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