Ralph E. Ellinwood Collection, 1917-1919
| Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs
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Abstract
Administrative/Biographical History
Ralph Everett Ellinwood was born on August 9, 1893. His father was Everett Ellinwood, a prominent attorney in Flagstaff, the U.S. Territory of Arizona. After a childhood in Flagstaff and Brisbee, Arizona, Ellinwood attended Amherst College. In June 1917 he entered the American Field Service (AFS), a volunteer organization serving with the French Army during the First World War. He served as a member of Transport Matériel [Etats-] Unis (TMU)397, also known as the Réserve Mallet, which transported munitions and supplies. AFS ceased to exist as an independent entity and was absorbed by the U.S. Army after the United States entered the war later that year, and Ellinwood consequently enlisted in the U.S. Army Ambulance Service in October.
On May 28, 1918, during the Third Battle of the Aisne, Ellinwood was taken prisoner by the Germans. As a prisoner of war he traveled extensively by foot and train, stopping at prison camps at Laon (July 1918) and Langensalza (August to November 1918). He returned to France on January 1, 1919, seven months after he was captured and a month and a half after the Armistice was signed to end the war.
Upon returning to the United States, Ellinwood wrote and published an account of his experience as a prisoner of war entitled Behind the German Lines (New York, Knickerbocker Press, 1920.) Ellinwood then earned a degree in journalism at Columbia University, married Clare Rounsvell, and worked for a newspaper in Sacramento, California. In 1924 the couple settled in Tucson, Arizona, where Ellinwood became editor and co-owner of the Arizona Daily Star. They had three children.
Ralph Everett Ellinwood died of a heart attack at age 37 in 1930.
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The Ralph E. Ellinwood Collection contains two copies of a spiral-bound 305-page manuscript consisting of typed transcriptions of Ellinwood’s World War I diary and letters. The diary and letters are collated together and organized chronologically and span the period June 9, 1917 to February 4, 1919. They reflect his experiences transporting munitions and supplies with Transport Matériel [Etats-] Unis (TMU) 397 of the American Field Service (AFS), and his experiences with the U.S. Army Ambulance Service (October 1917 to February 1919). There is a seven-month gap when he was a prisoner of war in the second half of 1918. The diary and letters were transcribed and assembled by an unknown person at an unknown date. They are both highly detailed, and the letters in particular are richly descriptive.
The collection also includes unbound, loose pages of a typed manuscript for Ellinwood’s Behind the German Lines (published in 1920), which chronicles his experiences as a prisoner of war from May to December of 1918. The manuscript is in draft form with penciled corrections, and is interspersed with a corrected later draft. The collection also includes a photographic print of Ellinwood in uniform and his empty wallet, embossed “American Field Service in France.”