At the outbreak of war, the American Hospital of Paris created an extension---the American Ambulance---to take care of wounded French soldiers. Then the battlefront moved away from Paris and most of the Ambulance's cars moved with it.

The move was organized and coordinated by Piatt Andrew, named "Inspector of Ambulances" by the Ambulance's chief---Robert Bacon. Through Andrew, the new "Field Service" became a part of the French Automobile Service and took a giant step away from its parent organization, the Ambulance.

Nonetheless, for the first year of its existence---from April 1915 to the summer of 1916,----Field Service headquarters would remain at the American Ambulance, Rue d'Inkermann, in Neuilly. Even though it had developed its own recruiting and fund-raising organization in America, it still was the administrative subject of the nearby American Hospital, Rue Chauveau.

Ambulance driving was not hospital work. It was adventure, it was service to the Cause, it was dangerous----but it was not medical.

Few young Americans went to "where the action was" by joining the French Foreign Legion. That was grim, dirty work. But soon there was a steady stream of volunteers to drive ambulances for the French Army at the Front.

Recruiting in the United States was efficient!

Easter Sunday, April 23, 1916.

More moving pictures were taken to-day of our Section. The films certainly should boost the American Ambulance. Although they are not faked, of course, only the most thrilling stunts we do were taken. They can't, for instance, depict the endless car-cleaning the fumigating, and many such dry details. Being Easter, we were treated to eggs, not only at headquarters, but even here at Cappy.

William Yorke Stevenson, At the Front in a Flivver, Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1917, p. 57

In the journeys of our speakers through various parts of America with the moving pictures which the French Army had taken of our men on duty, the interest in and knowledge of events in Europe varied much less thanmight have been expected. Wherever there was little enthusiasm it seemed generally to have been the result of even less first-hand information. Although publicity and businesslike preparation for showing the pictures naturally increased the size of our audiences, the proportionate returns seem to have depended more on the sympathy and revelation of the pictures themselves than on the size or type of audiences. [...]

The press notice and publicity resulting from these pictures lent a keen impetus to recruiting. Harvard, Cornell, California, and many other colleges, and cities throughout the country, contributed large numbers of men and cars. The first section of men to go across as a unit was sent by Leland Stanford University, and sailed directly after the German declaration of unrestricted warfare, two months before this country entered the war.

Henry Sleeper, "The Effort in America" in History of the American Field Service in France, "Friends of France," 1914-1917, Told by its Members. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1920. Volume I:

The success of the Field Service was such that it soon outgrew its "nest". Thus, in the summer of 1916, it "flew the coop" and began a life of its own at new headquarters at 21, Rue Raynouard in Paris. Until taken over by the U.S. Army Ambulance Service in the fall of 1917, the American Field Service (the dropping of the word "Ambulance" from its name marking its new freedom)---- nonetheless remained the legal and administrative "child" of the American Hospital and subject to the authority of its Board of Governors.