The American Hospital of Paris during the Great War

When it was founded in 1906, the American Hospital of Paris was a small 24-bed hospital. By August 1914, when Germany declared war on France, it had been transformed into a military hospital with more than 600 beds. When the war was at its worst, the hospital, combined with the surrounding field hospitals and other affiliated care centers, had as many as 2,000 beds.

On August 3, 1914, the American Hospital of Paris Board of Governors, led by U.S. Ambassador to France Myron T. Herrick, offered its facilities to the French authorities.

In exchange, France gave the hospital access to the large buildings of the nearby Lycée Pasteur and offered to finance a large, avant-garde military hospital there: the Ambulance of the American Hospital, Wounded Division.

Unprecedented generosity

Until April 6, 1917 and the United States’ entry into the war a few months later, the American Hospital of Paris was the epicenter of thousands of people’s volunteer efforts as well as a massive influx of American donations. 75 associations, federated as the Allied War Relief, estimated that close to $1 billion (in today’s dollars) had been raised between 1914 and 1917 to finance the conversion of Lycée Pasteur, the ambulance fleet, field hospitals and humanitarian aid.

But the United States provided more than just monetary aid; in the space of three years, teams of doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers would go to the American Hospital to transport, treat and perform surgery on hundreds of thousands of wounded persons.

Most did so to pay France back for the crucial support it provided during the American Revolution, as illustrated by the famous words of General Pershing on arriving in France in 1917: “Lafayette, we are here!”

In September 1914, after the Battle of the Marne had begun, an officer called the U.S. Ambassador to France, Timothy Herrick, to inform him that some 1,000 injured soldiers with no means of transportation, located 50 kilometers east of Meaux, were in desperate need of help. Ambassador Herrick called everyone he knew who owned a car. They all rushed to provide assistance, carrying 34 injured soldiers on their first run and making additional trips to transport those who remained. This impromptu convoy, born of the situation’s urgency, was the beginning of the American Hospital’s motor-ambulance corps.

The American Ambulance Field Service, which later became the American Field Service, still operates today. Over the course of the war, this fleet of volunteer drivers risked their lives to carry some 400,000 wounded soldiers to the hospital.

In January 1915, American medical schools began a series of rotations at the Ambulance of the American Hospital, where pioneering doctors were taking care of up to 1,600 wounded persons per day by the end of 1916.

Their medical knowledge and skills were vastly improved by working on wounded soldiers, leading to significant medical progress under these trying circumstances.

March 19, 1918: To thank the Hospital for services rendered to France, the French government decreed:

“The charitable organization known as The American Hospital of Paris is recognized as an institution of public benefit.”

A second decree signed by Raymond Poincaré authorized the hospital to receive donations and bequests under French law