Back from Tobruk
Croswell Bowen,
American Field Service Ambulance Driver
in World War II, 1941-1942.
Edited by Betsy Connor Bowen
© Potomac Books, Inc., 2012
Yale graduate and pacifist Croswell Bowen volunteered as an ambulance driver with the American Field Service on October 17, 1941. He was sent overseas in November 1941, and took part in the African Campaign until he was honorably discharged in August 1942. Throughout this experience, Bowen actively documented and photographed his journey, later compiling the information about his World War II experiences into an unpublished memoir.
Bowen’s daughter, Betsy Connor Bowen, edited and then published her father’s fascinating memoir more than sixty years after its initial completion. The final product, Back from Tobruk, covers Bowen’s wartime accomplishments and struggles, including his attempts to reconcile his pacifism with his belief that the war itself could finally bring worldwide peace. The book includes a number of photographs taken by Bowen during the war, though it also includes photographs taken by fellow ambulance drivers, which are now housed in the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs.
Back from Tobruk is available for purchase on the publisher’s Web site, and other commercial publishers.
Eyewitnesses to the Great War:
American Writers, Reporters,
Volunteers and Soldiers in France,
1914-1918
Ed and Libby Klekowski
© McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012
This book describes the wartime experiences of American writers, reporters, volunteers and soldiers serving on the Western Front in France throughout World War I, beginning with the experience of novelist Edith Wharton on her trip to transport supplies and inspect military hospitals there. The book also notes events of the American Field Service prior to the entrance of the United States into the war, including a description of founder A. Piatt Andrew
and the long and bloody Battle of Verdun. Six photographs from the American Field Service World War I Photographic Collection in the AFS Archives are depicted in the book, including an image of Mrs. W.K. Vanderbilt standing in front of the Reims Cathedral during her tour of the Western Front in 1916.
Ed and Libby Klekowski spent lengthy periods of time in France exploring the villages and forests where wartime events took place. The authors have produced two documentaries on the war for American Public Television, including Model T’s to War: American Ambulances on the Western Front, 1914-1918.
This book is available for purchase on the publisher’s Web site.
Fragments of Peace in a World at War:
Photographs, Poetry, and Perspective
John Candler (Jock) Cobb,
American Field Service Ambulance Driver
in World War II, 1942-1944
© Animist Press, 2011
Dr. John C. (Jock ) Cobb volunteered as an ambulance driver and official staff photographer with the American Field Service (AFS) during World War II. Cobb used his 35mm camera to capture the experience of war, including the Battle of Monte Cassino and encounters with local civilians seeking vaccinations. He developed the film and made photographic prints in the back of his ambulance, and mailed some back to AFS headquarters in New York City while keeping others to bring home after the war.
Fragments of Peace in a World at War consists of the photographs Cobb kept after the war, and serves as a photographic narrative of his time spent as an ambulance driver with AFS in Syria, North Africa, and Italy from 1942-1944. The black and white images are accompanied by Cobb’s poems and his reflective thoughts about World War II, war, and peace. For more information about the book, including purchase information, visit their official Web site here.
Death Before Dishonor:
Memoirs of a WWII Ambulance Driver
Kenneth Brennan,
American Field Service Ambulance Driver
in World War II, 1942-1945, with his daughter, Barbara Brennan
© Createspace, 2011
Unable to enlist in the United States military due to a childhood injury, yet determined to assist in the global struggle, Kenneth Brennan joined the American Field Service during World War II. Death before Dishonor: Memoirs of a WWII Ambulance Driver is a compilation of the vivid diaries and letters Brennan wrote during his time as an ambulance driver with AFS from 1942 until 1945. The memoir chronicles his experience with units ME 5 and CM 55 in Italy, North Africa, and the Middle East, from the terror of surviving bombing raids in the desert to the difficulties of navigating snowy mountain roads in Italy while carrying wounded soldiers.
The memoir was written with his daughter, Barbara Brennan, and is available to purchase online through Amazon.
Just Like a Taxi:
Frontline Ambulance, Italy 1944-1945
Bill Cantrall,
American Field Service Ambulance Driver
in World War II, 1944-1945,
with a foreward by Paul Shay
© Crossfire Press, 2011
Bill Cantrall served as an American Field Service (AFS) ambulance driver in unit CM 92 during World War II. Just Like a Taxi: Frontline Ambulance, Italy 1944-45 is a colorful and honest memoir of his time with AFS in the closing stages of the Italian Campaign. He details the heroic experiences of the young ambulance drivers in dodging German bullets or transporting the wounded to medical facilities by navigating an ambulance through the dark or around mountain curves. Cantrall also recounts the regular, day-to-day activities of being an ambulance driver, including experiencing the different cultures of the armies with which AFS served and the civilians they encountered, struggling to overcome environmental hurdles, and even searching for familiar foods in order to raise morale during the war.
This book is available through Amazon.
