An American Crusader at Verdun

Philip Sidney Rice
Published by the Author, at Princeton, N. J. 1918
Copyright, 1918, By Philip Sidney Rice
Published October, 1918
Printed in the United States of America
I hesitate to write of my experiences because so many books have been written about the war, and the story of the ambulancier has been told before.
Many young Americans in sympathy with the Allied cause, and particularly the cause of France, and many Americans anxious to uphold the honor of their own country, when others were holding back the flag, went over as “crusaders” in advance of the American Army. Many had gone over before I went; some have come back and told their story and told it well—and so, although I went as a “crusader,” I am not the first to tell the story.
But if my story interests a few of my friends and kin I shall be satisfied with the telling of it.
Philip Sidney Rice.
Rhodes Tavern, Harvey’s Lake, Pa.
The literature that is coming out, and which will come out, of the great war, will never cease as long as history shall recite the efforts of the German Spoiler to gain the mastery of the world, and fill the world with hate and hunger. Therefore, every bit of evidence that shall touch even so lightly on every phase of the conditions, and reveal even in the slightest sense a picture of what happened, will have its value.
Of Mr. Rice, I can say that as a youngster the spirit of adventure was strong in him. He tried his best to break into the War with Spain in 1898, but his weight and heart action compelled his rejection by the surgeons. He later, however, served with credit under my command, as an enlisted man, and as an officer of the Ninth Infantry, National Guard of Pennsylvania.