[Hanno Spoelstra]

Nick Balmer wrote:

The American Field Service was originally founded in 1915, and was a voluntary ambulance service who came to France to help look after the Allied wounded before the USA entered the war. They repeated this in 1939. Many of the volunteers were Quaker pacifists.

"AFS officially aligned with the British military and Free French forces (the Forces Françaises Libres, later called the Forces Françaises Combattantes or FFC) in 1941. As World War II progressed, the AFS volunteer ambulance drivers served alongside French, British, Polish, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, and South African troops in the Middle East, North Africa, Italy, Germany, India, and Burma, and again in France with the First French Army."

https://afs.org/archives/timeline/#afs-nav-1919-1920

The AFS were very highly regarded by the Commonwealth units that they supported.

There is a good account of their activities here https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/vie...xt=hist_honors

And:

"At the time of the meeting, [15 September 1941] 260 ambulances with 15% spare parts (known to the British as "American scale" replacements) had already been sent to the Middle East, which left only 140 and their spare parts and some domestic vehicles still to be sent. The British were to supply gasoline, oil, and tires for the vehicles, a few British personnel as cooks and clerks, and for the American volunteers food, lodging, hospitalization, and transport both to and from the Middle East."
"As this ambitious program got under way, the AFS New York office and the national organization became necessarily larger. Members who had served overseas in World War I were enlisted to serve as local representatives, ultimately covering one or more cities in 40 states and 35 colleges across the United States. They labored mightily and with the help of lecture tours and various benefits raised the volunteers and the money to make the organization, both at home and abroad, what D. M. Hinrichs was soon to declare "big business." However, without the early assistance of three notably large donations, this expansion would perforce have been a great deal slower. The Commonwealth Fund gave $25,000 before Unit I sailed for the Middle East, a second $25,000 in April 1942, and guaranteed a similar amount annually should it be needed. On 1 March 1942, William B. Leeds, who had financed the Field Service in Kenya, gave $50,000 for the new Field Service activity. And in April and August 1942 two gifts of $10,000 each from Thomas A. Yawkey firmly established the possibility of the new growth. Backed by these spectacular gifts, and by considerable generosity from people in all parts of the nation, the American Field Service was able to embark upon and finally to fulfill its ambitious program with the British forces in the Middle East."