The Early Life of Walt Disney by Andrew Stanley Kiste

Author:Andrew Stanley Kiste [Kiste, Andrew Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Entertainment & Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781526780805
Publisher: PenSword
Published: 2021-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

The American Red Cross

While it initially remained neutral in the conflict that raged across Europe, the United States supported the Allied nations by providing medical relief and mobility services through various volunteer organisations. One such group, the American Field Service, arrived in Europe as early as 1915, operating sixty ambulances to transport the wounded and dying to field hospitals behind the front. Over the course of the next few years, more volunteer relief organisations would arrive in Europe to support the American Field Service in caring for Allied wounded, such as the American Red Cross, the Knights of Columbus and the Young Men’s Christian Association.

As soon as the aggressors declared war against each other in late summer 1914, the American Red Cross began ramping up to provide essential support to all wartime belligerents, including the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians. American Red Cross director Henry P. Davidson believed that only through providing medical relief would the world become at peace once again: “[O]ur job in the American Red Cross,” he explained, “is to bind up the wounds of a bleeding world…[and] succour wounded nations.” As a result of this belief, on 12 September 1914, a ship called The Red Cross, nicknamed ‘The Mercy Ship’, left New York City for the war-ravaged and bloodied battlefields of Europe, carrying 170 surgeons and nurses organised into eleven units that would provide relief to each of the aggressor nations fighting in the war.

Over the course of the next thirteen months, the American Red Cross provided medical relief to Europe, spanning from Britain to Serbia. In October 1915, however, medical teams were withdrawn from European battlefields: British leadership was fearful that the medical supplies used by the American Red Cross could fall into the hands of the Central Powers and be hoarded as an alternative tactic of attack against its enemies. Instead, the relief organisation began to provide support to the 130 other groups that provided relief services to the aggressors across the Continent.

In 1917, the United States formally entered the war on the side of the Allied Powers, allowing it to provide additional services through the U.S. Army Ambulance Service, a branch of the United States Army Medical Department. This was much better equipped than the volunteer organisations due to funding from the U.S. Army and the American federal government. Employing more than 350,000, the Ambulance Service included more than 21,000 nurses and 31,000 physicians, equivalent to 24 per cent of all doctors in the United States.

The medical branch of the U.S. Army utilised forty-six ambulances manufactured by American automotive companies including Ford and General Motors, and were modified to handle the difficult wartime conditions of the European battlefields. A favourite vehicle used by the Ambulance Service was Ford’s Model T, which, according to a report filed by the U.S. Army Medical Department in 1925, was easily able to navigate the high-grade roads of Western Europe and was light enough to be lifted by three or four troops should the vehicle get stuck in a shell hole on the battlefield.

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