In addition to physicians and nurses, the U.S. Army assigned enlisted non-physicians and volunteers directly to the front lines of World War 1. Ernest Hemingway was such a Red Cross volunteer. (A photo of the nineteen-year-old Hemingway on his bicycle, equipped with a rifle, may be seen below). Although not employed in great numbers, and chiefly as stretcher-bearers, the stealth of the bicycle could at times prove superior to the ambulance and motorcycle in delivering field or shell dressings, bandages, gauze, iodine ampoules, morphine, basic sedatives and essential surgical instruments to the wounded.
The bicycle you see here was inspired by a World War 1 "General Operating Case" I found among my father's belongings following his death. As a doctor he would have been familiar with the instruments required to provide emergency surgery to the WW 1 soldier. It was one of the many eclectic finds he brought home after a day at the swap meet with my mother. When I unrolled the canvas case for the first time in our Dell Prairie garage, I was startled by the array of rather menacing, still-shiny instruments. The idea of building the combat medic bicycle soon followed.
The bicycle itself is probably an Iver Johnson, with an Automoto crank that might well have been substituted in France. I've equipped the bike with some of the necessaries required to save lives at the front: a leather frame case to hold medicines for treating everything from shrapnel and machine-gun wounds to trench foot and frostbite; a French canteen and Red Cross drinking cup, a bread bag confiscated from the Germans, a leather-sheathed aluminum brandy bottle, tools, bicycle pump and grease gun, kerosene lamp with bail handle, doubling the lamp's usefulness as surgical tool, and an Adrian helmet distributed among American troops by the French government. My Dad's operating case is quite heavy, and in all probability would have been carried either in the medic's backpack, or strapped to the bicycle's rear carrier. When encountering rugged terrain, the combat medic would either walk his bike or carry it over his shoulder, cyclocross style.
The typical combat medic, classified under international law as a non-combatant, did not carry a weapon, as did nineteen-year-old Hemingway, who longed for the fight. It was extremely dangerous work. crossing No Man's Land under a barrage of artillery and sniper fire to rescue injured comrades. The 1918 American Field Service bicycle is my tribute to these heroes of The War to End All Wars.
The bicycle you see here was inspired by a World War 1 "General Operating Case" I found among my father's belongings following his death. As a doctor he would have been familiar with the instruments required to provide emergency surgery to the WW 1 soldier. It was one of the many eclectic finds he brought home after a day at the swap meet with my mother. When I unrolled the canvas case for the first time in our Dell Prairie garage, I was startled by the array of rather menacing, still-shiny instruments. The idea of building the combat medic bicycle soon followed.
The bicycle itself is probably an Iver Johnson, with an Automoto crank that might well have been substituted in France. I've equipped the bike with some of the necessaries required to save lives at the front: a leather frame case to hold medicines for treating everything from shrapnel and machine-gun wounds to trench foot and frostbite; a French canteen and Red Cross drinking cup, a bread bag confiscated from the Germans, a leather-sheathed aluminum brandy bottle, tools, bicycle pump and grease gun, kerosene lamp with bail handle, doubling the lamp's usefulness as surgical tool, and an Adrian helmet distributed among American troops by the French government. My Dad's operating case is quite heavy, and in all probability would have been carried either in the medic's backpack, or strapped to the bicycle's rear carrier. When encountering rugged terrain, the combat medic would either walk his bike or carry it over his shoulder, cyclocross style.
The typical combat medic, classified under international law as a non-combatant, did not carry a weapon, as did nineteen-year-old Hemingway, who longed for the fight. It was extremely dangerous work. crossing No Man's Land under a barrage of artillery and sniper fire to rescue injured comrades. The 1918 American Field Service bicycle is my tribute to these heroes of The War to End All Wars.
1918 American Field Service Combat Medic's Bicycle ©Daniel Dahlquist