(Left) The cook at Villa le Querci, the American Field Service convalescent depot in Florence, Italy, ca. 1944-1945.  (Right) American Field Service Drivers at the Villa le Querci, ca. 1944-1945. Photographs by Irving Penn.  RG2/003, Irving Penn Photographic Collection. These images cannot be reproduced without permission from the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs.

Twenty minutes outside the historic city center of Florence, Italy, stands the Villa le Querci.  Situated among the oak trees for which it was named, the Villa became a destination for the advancing American Field Service (AFS) during World War II.  The AFS arrived at the Villa in August of 1944—a little more than a week after the Germans destroyed all the bridges crossing the Arno River in Florence except for the Ponte Vecchio- and eventually converted it into the official convalescent depot associated with the AFS Liaison Office in Florence.

Official AFS records from the war indicate that a number of Italian civilians lived in the Villa at this time, including thirteen year-old Danila Frassineti and her fifteen year-old brother, Giordano.  Their mother Helen, an American citizen, had been sent to a concentration camp and then released to live in the United States prior to the arrival of AFS at the Villa.  Because Danila and Giordano were Italian citizens, they had not been taken as prisoners and were left under the watch of servants and family friends.  Helen requested help from the U.S. Consul of Florence to arrange to have AFS move into the upper part of the Villa, where they stayed until July of 1945. 

In 2011, Danila contacted the AFS Archives to discover if she could find any information about her childhood home in Italy.  For information on Danila’s experience with AFS during the war or to view more photographs of the Villa found in the AFS Archives, read the article entitled “Villa le Querci: A Young Woman’s Wartime Memories of AFS” on pages 6-7 of the Spring 2012 issue of the AFS Janus here.

Convoy of chassis coming back from Le Havre, France, March 1915.  Photographer unknown. RG1/022, Regis H. Post Correspondence. This image cannot be reproduced without permission from the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs.

This photograph depicts a convoy of chassis coming back from the docks at Le Havre in France.  The chassis arrived from the United States and were driven to the American Ambulance Hospital in Neuilly, which was the parent organization out of which the American Field Service was formed during World War I.

The photograph accompanied a letter written by Regis H. Post to his mother on March 24, 1915, from the Department for the Wounded at the Hospital.  Post describes the photograph in his letter, and notes that the "railroads are so congested that we send our own men down to Havre, unpack the cars on the docks, assemble them, have a rough box built on them, and push them home along the road." 

More wartime letters written by Post can be found in his collection in the AFS Archives.

Bill Congdon holding a ceramic platter in Faenza, Italy, 1945. Photograph by Carl Zeigler. RG2/002 AFS World War II Photographic Collection. This image cannot be reproduced without permission from the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs.

William “Bill” Congdon was an American Field Service ambulance driver who served in the African Campaign in the Western Desert, Italian Campaign, and the France-Germany
Campaign during World War II. The photograph depicted above was included in a two-volume photographic album compiled by Carl Zeigler, a World War II ambulance driver and staff photographer for the American Field Service. Zeigler’s original caption for the photograph is as follows:

Congdon Helps Revive Famed Faenza Art...
Bill Congdon of D Platoon worked with the Allied Military Governor of Faenza and the civilian Red Cross on local relief work. This old city, long famous for Faenza pottery and ceramics, had lost practically all of its kilns and shops during the month-long shelling of the city by the 8th Army. The pottery makers were desolate and believed the art would never be revived. But Congdon, who is a painter, etcher and sculptor, searched out surviving examples of Faenza ware from the ruins of homes and cellars where they had been hidden for safekeeping, and staged an exhibit. This huge platter, in greens and purples and yellows, was purchased by Congdon for 5000 lire, and other Field Service men bought similar museum pieces. The Faenzians took heart and said they thought they would get going again.

Congdon’s appreciation for art continued after the war, when he became an influential painter of urban landscapes and religious themes. His artistic legacy is featured in a new exhibition entitled “The Sabbath of History: William Congdon- Meditations on Holy Week, ” running from February 22- September 16, 2012 at The Knights of Columbus Museum in New Haven, Connecticut. More information on the exhibit can be found on the AFS Archives News Updates page.

AFS Participants performing a local dance called “Seng-ka-tib-kaw” in Thailand, October 1981. Photographer unknown. This image cannot be reproduced without permission from the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs.

This photograph depicts AFS Intercultural Programs Participants performing a local dance called “Seng-ka-tib-kaw” from Northeast Thailand for a television program performance in October of 1981.

AFS Thailand sent their first group of students to the United States in 1962 under the supervision of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with support from the United States Information Service.  Today, AFS Thailand is an international organization, sending and hosting students to and from countries around the world with the help of around 3,500 volunteers and eighty chapters throughout the country.

AFS Thailand celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year, and will host the AFS World Congress in Bangkok from February 7-11, 2012, for over 200 staff, volunteers, chairs, board members, and partner directors from around the world.

Sidney C. Howard standing in front of an American Field Service ambulance in Alsace, France in 1916. Photographer unknown. RG1/019, John C. B. Moore Collection. This image cannot be reproduced without permission from the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs.

This photograph of famous playwright and screenwriter Sidney Coe Howard (1891-1939) was taken in France during World War I, and was found in John C. B. Moore’s wartime scrapbook.  Howard joined the American Field Service as an ambulance driver in June of 1916.  He was sent to Alsace, France with SSU 9 until December of 1916, when he joined the newly-formed SSU 10 unit serving with the French Army of the Orient in the Balkans.  Howard later joined the French aviation units following the militarization of the American Field Service in the fall of 1917.

Howard was the author of many plays throughout his career, including “Labor Spy,” “Yellow Jack,” “The Silver Cord,” and “Paths of Glory,” and won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for “They Knew What They Wanted.”  In addition to being nominated for the screenplays of “Arrowsmith” and “Dodsworth,” he won a posthumous Oscar in 1939 for writing the adapted screenplay of “Gone With the Wind.”  Howard died in a tractor accident on his Pennsylvania farm at the age of forty-eight, four months before the premiere of the film.  

The AFS Letters was a monthly publication containing letters from World War II ambulance drivers, copies of which were sent to the AFS headquarters on Beaver Street in New York City by their friends and parents. The issues were compiled by Dot Field and included correspondence describing the daily activities of the drivers and their experiences in the Middle East, North Africa, India, Burma, Italy, France, and Germany.

This particular issue of the AFS Letters was sent during the holiday season in 1943. The cover includes a photograph of AFS ambulances aboard an LST (which transported vehicles and personnel), and the first page contains a letter from Director General Stephen Galatti, who reminded those at home of the sacrifice their sons and husbands were making to help wounded soldiers during the war.

Photographer unknown. This image (and any others on the website) cannot be reproduced without permission from the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs.

This photograph of current AFS President Vincenzo Morlini was taken on the S/S Seven Seas in August of 1966, when he sailed from Rotterdam to New York as an AFS Winter Program Participant. On this particular night the students wore their clothes backwards for a party on the ship. The guitar Vincenzo is holding belonged to Franco Bernabé, a fellow Italian student on the program who now serves as the CEO of Telecom Italia.

Stay tuned for the upcoming Fall 2011 issue of the AFS Janus, which includes this photograph and a letter from Vincenzo. Click on the play button below to listen to Vincenzo's recent conversation with former AFS President Tachi Cazal.

Photograph by PP/Photocenter. This image (and any others on the website) cannot be reproduced without permission from the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs.

This photograph depicts a group of AFS Returnees participating in a kickline during the International AFS Weekend held in Antwerp, Belgium, from September 13 -15, 1974. Over 300 AFS Returnees flocked to the Belgian “Tent City” for the gathering, which was held on the site of a former mine field from World War II. The program was coordinated in conjunction with the AFS European Conference, and included a forum with then-President Steven Rhinesmith, workshops on encouraging involvement in AFS in the respective homelands of the Returnees, and a dance celebrating the 25th anniversary of the AFS Belgium office.

For other historic photographs of AFS Returnees, Particpants or World War II Ambulance Drivers dancing, visit the news feature on the AFS-USA partner website located here. For information about the U.S. Department of State’s “Dance with Us: Motion Across Cultures” photograph competition for AFS government-sponsored program Returnees, visit their website here.

Photograph by Dr. John C. (Jock) Cobb. This image (and any others on the website) cannot be reproduced without permission from the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs.

This photograph is part of a series Dr. John C. (Jock) Cobb developed while in Tunisia, which depicts the methods of "desert" medicine in North Africa during World War II.  This particular image, which can also be found in the American Field Service World War II Photographic Collection, features an orderly preparing for an operation by lighting the primus stove to boil the sterilizer.  The floor of the operating tent is covered with canvas to prevent the sand from blowing around during the operation. 

Cobb recently published a photographic narrative of his time spent as an ambulance driver and official staff photographer with the American Field Service during the war. The book, entitled Fragments of Peace in a World at War, consists of photographs from Syria, North Africa, and Italy from 1942-1944, and includes other images from his "Desert Medicine" series. More information about the book, including purchase information, can be found here.

This image (and any others on the website) cannot be reproduced without permission from the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs.

Named for Captain Richard Mallet, the Réserve Mallet was the collective name for the series of units known individually as Transport Matériel [Etats-] Unis (TMU), which were engaged in the transportation of munitions and supplies for the French during World War I.  Though somewhat controversial at the time, Director General A. Piatt Andrew recruited American Field Service men for these camion units under the belief that they should serve France in whatever ways necessary in order to help the war effort.

The Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs (AFS Archives) contains several collections from World War I Drivers who were members of a TMU unit, including the Edward H. Pattison Collection and the Ralph E. Ellinwood Collection.  The original recruitment poster (pictured above) is stored with the American Field Service World War I Records. 

Photo by Abby Rowe - Courtesy of the National Park Service

This photograph shows President John F. Kennedy walking to the microphone before addressing AFS students at the White House in July 1961.  Kennedy spoke to AFS students in Washington, D.C. three times during his presidency, including in July of 1963, when he met them on the South Lawn of the White House.  Kennedy commended the American Field Service for their activities as a voluntary ambulance organization during World War II, and addressed the students directly about their role in creating a more peaceful world.

To listen to an audio clip of President Kennedy's speech from July 1963, click the play button below.

In this clip from a Legacy Project interview completed in 2002, Arthur Howe, Jr. discusses his time spent on the Egyptian tourist ship that transported his ambulance unit (ME 2), 80 Canadian nurses, and other individuals helping the British military (often in civilian roles) from New York City to the Middle East in January 1942.

The ship hugged the coast due to the threat of German military submarines (U-boats), and broke down or needed repairs several times before finally reaching Port Tewfik, their final destination at the north end of the Red Sea.

Oral History Collection, Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs