Regis H. Post Correspondence, 1914-1915

The Regis H. Post Correspondence collection consists of nineteen typed letters from Post to his mother from November 22, 1914 to March 29, 1915 while he worked for the American Hospital Ambulance Service in Paris, and one photograph that was enclosed with the letter dated March 24, 1915.  The letters have some handwritten corrections and notes written on them in an unknown hand.  They were copied and typed by an unknown person at an unknown date, and may have originally been typed by Post.  The letters are detailed accounts of Post’s activities, thoughts, observations, and emotions.   They provide an early account of the work of the Ambulance Department of the American Hospital before the creation of the American Field Service, and allude to the politics of membership of the organization.  The letters also provide interesting sketches of the Transportation Committee of the Hospital, and in them Post mentions individuals significant to the early history of the American Ambulance, including Lovering Hill, Richard Lawrence, and dentists Dr. George Hayes and Dr. William H. Potter.  The photograph depicts a convoy of Ford chassis, which had been unloaded from the docks at Le  Havre, on the road  to the American Hospital in Paris.

The earliest Post letters predate the arrival of A.P. Andrew, the founder of the American Field Service, in France, and later letters do not mention Andrew, even though the two men must have worked together.