List of ambulance drivers during World War I

This is a list of notable people who served as ambulance drivers during the First World War. A remarkable number—writers especially—volunteered as ambulance drivers for the Allied Powers. In many cases they sympathized strongly with the ideals of the Allied Powers but did not want, or were too old, to participate in a combat role. For women, combat was not an option at the time. Several of the Americans on the list volunteered before the United States' 1917 entry into the war. Many of the American writers would later be associated with the Lost Generation.

Businesspeople

• Tony Hulman^[1] - American businessman, owner and operator of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and volunteer with the American Red Cross
• Ray Kroc - American entrepreneur of McDonald's Corporation fame - trained to become an ambulance driver, though the war ended before he saw action.

Composers

• Maurice Ravel^[2] - volunteer ambulance driver or truck driver
• Albert Roussel^[3] - Red Cross transport driver
• Ralph Vaughan Williams^[4] - Royal Army Medical Corps

Filmmakers

• René Clair^[5]
• Jean Cocteau^[6]
• Walt Disney^[7][8] - volunteer American Red Cross, but served after the armistice ending World War I was signed.^[9][10]
• William A. Wellman^[11]

Writers

• Robert C. Binkley - volunteer, United States Army Ambulance Service
• Louis Bromfield^[12] - volunteer American Field Service
• William Slater Brown^[12] - volunteer Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps
• Malcolm Cowley^[12] - volunteer American Field Service
• Harry Crosby^[12] - volunteer American Field Service
• E. E. Cummings^[12] - volunteer Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps
• Kati Dadeshkeliani - Russian Army ambulance driver
• Russell Davenport^[13] - U.S. Army Medical Corps
• John Dos Passos^[14] - volunteer Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps
• Dale Van Every^[15] - volunteer, United States Army Ambulance Service
• Julien Green^[12][16]- volunteer American Field Service
• Ernest Hemingway^[12] - volunteer American Red Cross in Italy
• Robert Hillyer^[12] - volunteer Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps
• Sidney Howard^[12] - volunteer American Field Service
• Jerome K. Jerome^[17] - French Army ambulance driver
• John Howard Lawson^[18] - volunteer Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps
• Desmond MacCarthy^[13] - volunteer British Red Cross ambulance corps
• Archibald MacLeish^[19] - U.S. Army ambulance driver, who later became an artillery captain
• John Masefield - served as hospital orderly in British hospital for French soldiers in France
• F. Van Wyck Mason^[20] - ambulance corps volunteer, who later joined the French Army and then the U.S. Army. Grandfather Frank H. Mason was Chairman of the Ambulance Committee of the American Hospital in Paris.^[21]
• Somerset Maugham^[13] - volunteer British Red Cross ambulance corps
• Charles Nordhoff^[13] - volunteer American Field Service
• William Seabrook^[12][13] - American Field Service
• Robert W. Service^[22] - British Red Cross volunteer
• Olaf Stapledon^[23] - Friends' Ambulance Unit volunteer
• Hugh Walpole - Red Cross volunteer in Russia
• Amos Niven Wilder^[24] - American Field Service volunteer, who later joined an artillery unit

Other notable people

• Frank Buckles^[25] - Last American World War I veteran
• Marion Barbara "Joe" Carstairs - a wealthy British power boat racer known for her speed and her eccentric lifestyle^[26]
• Stafford Cripps - British politician
• Hélène Dutrieu^[27] - pioneering French aviator
• Florence Jaffray Harriman- socialite and member of Wilson's commission on labor unrest - director of the Women's Motor Corps in France, and organizer of the American Red Cross Women's Motor Corps of the District of Columbia
• Waldo Peirce^[28] - American painter - volunteer American Field Service
• Percy Toplis - notorious British deserter

People who served the Allies in a related capacity

• Algernon Blackwood - British Red Cross Searcher, trying to identify dead or lost soldiers - British author
• A.J. Cronin - Royal Navy surgeon - Scottish novelist
• Marjory Stoneman Douglas - American Red Cross volunteer - eminent American conservationist
• Dorothy Canfield Fisher - volunteered to help blinded Allied soldiers - American social activist and author
• E.M. Forster - interviewed wounded in Egyptian hospitals - English novelist
• Peter Grant - volunteer driver/mechanic^[29]
• Anne Green - volunteer work, author and translator - sister of aforementioned ambulance driver and author Julian Green
• Gertrude Stein - volunteer driver for French hospitals - American poet, playwright, feminist
• Edmund Wilson - American literary critic

References