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Title: Gentlemen Volunteers

Subtitle: The Story of the American Ambulance Drivers in the First World War

Author: Arlen J. Hansen

Narrator: Sam LeMans

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-28-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

The tale of the American volunteer ambulance drivers of the First World War is one of gallantry amid gore, manners amid madness. Until now this stirring example of wartime courage has been recounted only in fragments. Arlen J. Hansen's Gentlemen Volunteers brings to life the entire story of the men - and women - who formed the first ambulance corps, and who went on to redefine American culture.

Some were to become legends - Ernest Hemingway, E. E. Cummings, John Dos Passos, Malcolm Cowley, Walt Disney, Dashiell Hammett - but all were part of a generation seeking something greater and grander than what they could find at home.

What the volunteers found in France was carnage on an unprecedented scale. Shrapnel and barbed wire, the machine gun, flamethrower, and poison gas - all then-recent inventions - were producing casualties that overwhelmed medical facilities. Wounded soldiers spent hours, sometimes days, lying in squalor while waiting to be transported to hospitals on horse-drawn wagons. What was most critical was to get the wounded from the front lines to the field hospitals, and quickly. It was here that the ambulance drivers covered themselves in mud and glory.

Featuring firsthand accounts, letters and diaries, and a trove of previously unpublished and rare archival material, Gentlemen Volunteers is the definitive book on this fascinating chapter in American history.

Editorial Reviews:

The First World War was marked by long-lasting fighting and brutality in the trenches, but amidst the chaos, American volunteers stepped up to help. In Arlen J. Hansen's Gentlemen Volunteers: The Story of the American Ambulance Drivers in the First World War , narrator Sam LeMans chronicles the heroic efforts of American military hospital volunteers in Paris as well as the volunteer motor ambulance corps who braved the front. In a gritty, affecting performance, LeMans sympathetically voices the firsthand accounts of these brave men and women, whose ranks included luminaries of American culture such as Ernest Hemingway, e. e. Cummings, Walt Disney, and Dashiell Hammett. Including previously unheard archival material, this is a gripping listen that will fascinate any military history buff.

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