Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 167, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1917 — LOCAL YOUTHS MAY RETURN [ARTICLE]

LOCAL YOUTHS MAY RETURN

IF CABLE REPORTS ARE TRUE CONCERNING AMBULANCE % DRIVERS IN FRANCE.* If cable reports reaching this country from France are true concerning young Americans who have reached that country to take up their work as ambulance drivers for the period of the war, then three Rensselaer boys may be among the disappointed ones. Samuel Duvall and Verne Davisson are now on their way to France to do service in the ambulance division and Alfred Thompson is already there to work in a like capacity. The following cable from Paris to the Chicago Tribune, if authenic, will show the conditions that American ambulance drivers of draft age are facing: Paris, July 23.—Large numbers of American field ambulance service men are arriving in Paris. Sixty per cent of them are of the draft age. Several of the ambulance men have applied to the American army headquarters for positions in the supply corps but they have been told that nhey must enlist and take their chance op being assigned to that service. More than a hundred of the ambulance men are stopping around Paris. They are of the draft age. When they apriye in France they realize that their duty to their country demands a greater sacrifice than enlistment in the ambulance corps, and they hope that the war department will arrange to accept their enlistments in France.

Some are trying to enter the French aviation service. They would prefer to enter the American aviation service, but they are unable to arrange that here and are told that they must return to America to join. Since most of the men are paying the bulk of their own expenses they face a serious situation unless the army doors are opened to them. They must either enter the ambulance service or go destitute. “I have been trying to join the American army,” said one of these men today, “but it looks like I must join the French. Seven of us fellows arrived with the Norton Harjes unit and we have been in Paris for ten days. We refused to go out with the ambulance service because we all are of the draft age and we do not like th ecriticism of the regulars. Besides we now realize what we did not realize while in the United States, that we are needed here in the army. ———.

“We applied first to jhe aviation service and then to the transport service, since we all know how to drive automobiles, but the American headquarters said that .their orders did riot permit them to accept our enlistments, although we are willing to go wherever the army wants us to now. “Many of us came over, not to dodge military service, because myself and the others joined the ambulance corps before war was declared, jut because we wanted to be the first to the firing line. We are not afraid to fight but we want to serve under the United States flag. “We realize that the ambulance service is not the place for us,, but the only opportunity left open is to join the French army and they may refuse to take us because we are men of the draft age in an allied country. “We are youths without a country. We cannot join our own army, the French courteously refuse us and we are criticised if we join the ambulance. Is not the United States going to give us a chance to reform? Meanwhile many ambulance men arrive on every steamer. The life of the ambulance drivers is not altogether a safe one. Several have jeen killed or wounded in the American service already this month.