Illustrated with a number of photographs from the French Front Lines in and around Verdun. Also Includes The Americans in the First World War Illustration Pack - 57 photos/illustrations and 10 maps. Henry Beston Sheahan was a noted American novelist and naturist who wrote many well-known books, including the Cape Cod classic The Outermost House; he volunteered for service in the French Army during the First World War. In volunteer Poilu he recounts his experiences in the American Ambulance Service in the evacuating casualties in and around Verdun during 1916. In the midst of the bloodiest prolonged siege in the world at that time the number of wounded French soldiers were prodigious; the Ambulance services needed every able body even if they did come from the neutral United States. In spite of the huge workload that Sheahan undertook he managed to scribble notes of scenes and anecdotes of the great battle and the soldiers of the French Army. A rare and movingly written memoir from the Great Battle of Verdun.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Henry Beston was an American writer and naturalist, best known as the author of The Outermost House, written in 1925. After graduating from Harvard, Beston began teaching at the University of Lyon. Beston joined the French army in 1915 and served as an ambulance driver. Beston's first book A Volunteer Poilu describes his service in le Bois le Pretre and at the Battle of Verdun. Other books by Beston include Full Speed Ahead (1919), The Firelight Fairy Book (1919), The Starlight Wonder Book (1921), Book of Gallant Vagabonds (1925), The Sons of Kai (1926), and The Living Age (1921)

Originally published in 1916. Personal narrative. World War I.

They left Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Michigan, and Stanford to drive ambulances on the French front, and on the killing fields of World War I they learned that war was no place for gentlemen. The tale of the American volunteer ambulance drivers of the First World War is one of gallantry amid gore; manners amid madness. Arlen J. Hansen’s Gentlemen Volunteers brings to life the entire story of the men—and women—who formed the first ambulance corps, and who went on to redefine American culture. Some were to become legends—Ernest Hemingway, e. e. cummings, Malcolm Cowley, and Walt Disney—but all were part of a generation seeking something greater and grander than what they could find at home. The war in France beckoned them, promising glory, romance, and escape. Between 1914 and 1917 (when the United States officially entered the war), they volunteered by the thousands, abandoning college campuses and prep schools across the nation and leaving behind an America determined not to be drawn into a “European war.” What the volunteers found in France was carnage on an unprecedented scale. Here is a spellbinding account of a remarkable time; the legacy of the ambulance drivers of WWI endures to this day.