In early October 1914 Harjes and his wife Frederica Berwind Harjes (1877?-1954), a member of the American Ambulance Hospital board, set up a mobile field hospital comprising several surgeons, orderlies, and drivers and set off to work in the Compiègne-Montdidier sector north of Paris, providing medical assistance for the French army. Their work continued through the autumn and winter of 1914-15 but increasingly, with more use by the French authorities of the mobile ambulance aspect of their operation, the drivers and vehicles began to operate independently of the medical facilities. In turn, more young American men were attracted to volunteer for work in this more active role. Harjes dropped the hospital branch in mid-February 1915.

An element of ambulance duty that began to cause frustration for Harjes drivers and those of the other corps now operating in the field was that the French Army was reluctant to allow the Americans to operate in or from frontline postes de secours (advanced dressing stations), given their status as nationals of a neutral power. The French feared that volunteers might harbor pro-German sympathies. Instead, the drivers were restricted to more routine "jitney" work, ferrying the sick and wounded from incoming sanitary trains to hospitals in rearguard towns and cities.

American Ambulances on the Champagne Battlefield
East of Reims

Richard Norton’s "Anglo-American" Corps began around the same time as Harjes and allied itself with the British Red Cross (BRC) after the American Ambulance Hospital refused to sponsor it. The hospital was initially unwilling to develop a large ambulance wing. The BRC helped underwrite some of Norton’s operating costs and used the corps to distribute supplies. Although technically attached to the BRC in Boulogne, the corps carried out most of its work in the following months under the auspices of the French Second Army some seventy miles to the south-east. Norton’s relationship with the BRC was a strained one, with Norton finding his sponsor inflexible and administratively cumbersome. By December 1915 he joined Harjes – who had begun such a relationship six months earlier – in forging a link with the American (National) Red Cross (ANRC or ARC) instead. At the end of 1916 the Harjes and Norton corps merged into one ambulance unit, the Norton-Harjes Formation under the ARC banner.

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U.S. Army Ambulance Drivers in Training

The volunteers continued in service under their own auspices until the US entered the war in April 1917, when they were amalgamated in October 1917 into the United States Army Ambulance Service (USAAS) and AEF Transportation Division. At the time of handover, the American Field Service comprised 33 sections (34 at its peak) with some 1,200 ambulance volunteers, almost 1,000 ambulances, 14 camion sections, and 800 camion drivers. The combined Norton-Harjes Formation strength reached 13 sections, over 100 ambulances, and 200 men. Only around 500 volunteers transferred over to USAAS; however, the majority of them from the AFS. Nearly 1,000 former AFS volunteers went on to serve in American Expeditionary Force units, US Air Service, and US Navy, as well as French and British forces.

Leading the French military mission visit to the U.S. in May 1917, Marshal Joseph Joffre (1852-1931) specifically highlighted the work and model of the volunteer ambulance services, identifying the continued supply of ambulance units to the French army as a priority area. Mobilization by the US Medical Department of the United States Army Ambulance Service was consequently swift and from the outset continued the previous policy of accepting whole volunteer units raised by colleges, as well as others raised by cities and corporations.

Recruiting Volunteer Ambulance Drivers

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Volunteer James Rogers McConnell
Ambulance Driver & Aviator

McConnell, American Field Service Driver

James Rogers McConnell was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a prominent judge, in 1887. The family later moved to North Carolina. McConnell attended private schools throughout his childhood and went to college at the University of Virginia. He attended law school briefly and then worked in several business ventures back home in North Carolina.

A family friend described McConnell’s “adventurous spirit,” which led him to volunteer in 1915 for the American Ambulance Field Service, a volunteer ambulance corps newly founded by Americans in Paris that same year (later called the American Field Service or AFS). As an ambulance driver, McConnell gathered injured men from the battlefield and brought them for treatment to military field hospitals. After bravely serving for a year, he earned the distinguished Croix de Guerre medal from the French government for courage under fire.

Increasingly passionate about defending France, however, McConnell had begun to consider leaving the noncombatant ambulance service to enlist as a volunteer with the French military. The newly created Lafayette Escadrille provided him the opportunity to do so.

McConnell in the Cockpit of a Nieuport 11

The Lafayette Escadrille was a group of American pilots serving with the French Air Service (Aéronautique Militaire) prior to the entry of the United States into the war. Authorized by the French government in the spring of 1916, the group was named in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, considered by many to be a French hero who helped win the war for the American colonists during the American Revolution. The pilots wore fur-lined uniforms to keep them warm in the fragile planes, often going out on two-hour patrols.

Thirty-eight Americans served in the Lafayette Escadrille, many of whom became famous on the home front for their dangerous volunteer service. McConnell wrote a book about his experiences during the war titled Flying for France (1916); it helped Americans at home understand the kind of service they were doing overseas on the side of France and built support for the U.S. to enter the war.

Volunteering as a military pilot for France allowed McConnell to take sides in what he saw as a righteous cause. It also gave him the privilege of learning to fly. As he wrote about flying for the French Air Service in his book, “It was the beginning of a new existence, the entry into an unknown world. . . For us all it contained unlimited possibilities for initiative and service to France.”

Casualties in this type of volunteer service skyrocketed during the war, as air-to-air combat increased. McConnell’s plane was shot down on 19 March 1917, during aerial combat with two German planes. McConnell was killed just weeks before his government joined the Allied cause in Europe as a combatant nation.

Source: The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I, 1914-1919, AFS International

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