Printed in the United States of America
Foreword
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.
Introduction
A citation in general orders, by the Commanding General of the 69th Division of Infantry of the French Army, which declares that Driver Philip S. Rice “has always set an example of the greatest courage and devotion in the most trying circumstances during the evacuation of wounded in the attacks of August and September, 1917, before Verdun,”[1] ought to be sufficient introduction in itself to this story of an American Ambulance Driver who bore himself valiantly in those days of the great tragedy at Verdun. And yet for the story itself, and for the man who has written it, something can be said by one of his friends in appreciation of both the story and the man.