A citation in general orders, by the Commanding General of the 69th
Division of Infantry of the French Army, which declares that Driver
Philip S. Rice “has always set an example of the greatest courage and
devotion in the most trying circumstances during the evacuation of
wounded in the attacks of August and September, 1917, before
Verdun,”[1] ought to be sufficient introduction in itself to this
story of an American Ambulance Driver who bore himself valiantly in
those days of the great tragedy at Verdun. And yet for the story
itself, and for the man who has written it, something can be said by
one of his friends in appreciation of both the story and the man.
The literature that is coming out, and which will come out, of the
great war, will never cease as long as history shall recite the
efforts of the German Spoiler to gain the mastery of the world, and
fill the world with hate and hunger. Therefore, every bit of evidence
that shall touch even so lightly on every phase of the conditions, and
reveal even in the slightest sense a picture of what happened, will
have its value.
Of Mr. Rice, I can say that as a youngster the spirit of adventure was
strong in him. He tried his best to break into the War with Spain in
1898, but his weight and heart action compelled his rejection by the
surgeons. He later, however, served with credit under my command, as
an enlisted man, and as an officer of the Ninth Infantry, National
Guard of Pennsylvania.
When the United States entered the conflict on the side of the Entente
Allies in the present war, Mr. Rice, knowing that he could not gain a
place in the fighting forces, volunteered for service in the American
Ambulance Corps in France. Herein is written the story of that service
simply told, without vainglory or boasting. It is a story of a
soldier’s work――for it was as a soldier he served.
Simply told, yes; but well told. For instance, the recital of the
story of that evening of July 13, in the after dusk, when the guns had
silenced forever the voice of his comrade, Frederick Norton, when they
laid him to rest on the side of the hill in view of the enemy, and the
towers of the desecrated Cathedral of Rheims. And that other time,
when in front of Verdun, the “slaughter house of the world,” when
nerve-racked he had stopped his car on the road, in the midst of the
shells and gas clouds, when he said to himself: “If I do go and am
hit, the agony will be over in a few minutes, but, if I turn back, the
agony will be with me all the rest of my life”――so he put on his gas
mask and drove on.
The “Cross of War” is not given by France for any but deserving
action. The men of France who commended and recommended Phil Rice for
the distinguished honor conferred upon him knew that in every day of
his service he deserved what the French Government, through General
Monroe, Commanding the 69th Division of Infantry, gave to him――the
Croix de Guerre.
It is something to have been a part of it, to have visioned with your
own eyes the scenes and the places that now lie waste upon the bosom
of fair France; to have witnessed the horrors of the deadly gigantic
monster War as it is now being conducted “Over There.” To have heard
singing in your ears the whirr of the avions in the night air――to have
seen with your own eyes the tragic diorama of the hateful and cruel
side of war――and it is something for your children’s children in the
years that are yet to come to tell that in the Great War their
forebear bore an honorable part.
C. B. DOUGHERTY,
Major General National Guard of
Pennsylvania, Retired