Powel Fenton Collection, 1914-1975 | Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs

Powel Fenton was born on May 18, 1890, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1914 and left for Paris to join Section Sanitaire [Etats-] Unis (SSU) 3 of the Transportation Committee (later to become the American Field Service) at the American Ambulance Hospital of Paris in 1915.  On July 23, 1915, the Transportation Committee appointed him Mechanical Officer for SSU 3, stationed in Voges, France.  In Voges Fenton oversaw approximately twenty-two Ford ambulances during the most severe fighting.  The French government awarded Fenton the Croix de Guerre for his distinguished service in the Alsace region in 1916, the same year that the American Field Service (AFS) broke off from the American Ambulance Hospital and established a separate headquarters in Paris.  AFS ceased to exist as an independent ambulance organization when the United States entered the war in 1917.  At that time, Fenton assumed the rank of First Lieutenant in the Aviation Section of the Signal Officers Reserve Corps of the U. S. Army.

In 1939 as World War II broke out, Fenton returned to Paris as a volunteer for the American Red Cross.  The Nazis arrested Fenton in France in December 1941, and interned him as a prisoner of war at Frontstalag 122 (also known as Camp Royallieu) in Compienge, France in late 1941 or early 1942.  Frontstalag 122 held over 54,000 Jews, politicians, political prisoners, union activists, communists, and French civilians between 1941 and 1944.  Fenton remained at Frontstalag 122 for over two years, until the allies liberated France in May of 1944.  Fenton returned to his home in Philadelphia after the end of the war, where he passed away in 1986.