Thesis
The greatest adventure: American volunteers from Leland Stanford Jr. University and the University of California, Berkeley, in the American Field Service, 1916-1918
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2015
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/103728
Abstract
In February of 1917, twenty-one volunteers from Leland Stanford Jr. University left California to drive ambulances with the American Field Service in France. What was known as the First Stanford unit of the Friends of France was followed by two more groups of volunteers from Stanford and one from the University of California, Berkeley. Each unit spent nearly a month traveling from California to Paris. Once in France, they stayed at 21 Rue Raynouard, a mansion rented by the Field Service for the training and housing of new volunteers. Here, they were assigned to new or existing Field Service units and deployed to support divisions of the French Army, serving both in France at places like Verdun as well as in the Balkans. Once at the front, the volunteers, many under the age of 21, experienced the First World War as citizens of a neutral nation supporting the army of a belligerent. As part of their duty of evacuating wounded French soldiers, they experienced and witnessed the bombardment from artillery and aircraft, and the carnage caused by the new weapons of war. The realities of warfare quickly displaced their romanticized expectations. In October, 1917, the American Field Service was federalized and incorporated into the U.S. Army. Volunteers who had not already completed their six months of service were authorized to remain with their federalized ambulance units, but many transferred to branches of the French and American militaries, with aviation being the most popular. This thesis relies heavily on the unpublished letters and diaries of six California volunteers: Alan and Jack Nichols, A. Piatt Andrew, Charles H. Grant, John K. Honey, and Lansing Warren. It also utilizes published primary works written by volunteers during, and in the years immediately following, the war, particularly the three-volume History of the American Field Service.
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Details
- Title
- The greatest adventure
- Creators
- Nyssa Allixon Runyan
- Contributors
- Orlan J. Svingen (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- History, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900525193501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis