On this day in 1918, Major Osborn (left), Chief of the American Red Cross Transportation Service and Major Perkins, Red Cross Commissioner for Europe, inspected the Red Cross transportation assets in Paris France. Keep in mind, Paris was not far from the front lines and was under occasional heavy artillery fire by long range artillery, so this was inspecting, essentially, something very near the front.
It occurs to me that I haven't expanded out on the role of the Red Cross in World War One. That's a pretty severe omission and I'll have to do it if I have time. One thing that should be pretty obvious is that there came a point at which the American Red Cross's ambulance service was basically folded into the Army.
C. B. Brockway in the uniform of an American officer.
Something else worth noting here is that the Red Cross ambulance service was motorized. That was something that doesn't seem like that big of a deal to us now, but it sure was at the time. Automobiles were new, and a minority of people, including a minority of Americans, knew how to drive them. Driving required skills and talent, far more than driving does today, and qualified drivers were in demand.
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