Lawrence B. Cummings Collection, 1916-1917
| Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs
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Abstract
Administrative/Biographical History
Lawrence Belding Cummings was born on May 5, 1881, in Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from Harvard in 1903 and then served as Chief Clerk to the President at the Central Union Telephone Company in Indianapolis, Indiana. Cummings married Mabel Louis Talbot in Indianapolis on May 31, 1906, and they had two sons: Talbot (born July 23, 1910) and John Lawrence (born March 22, 1913).
From August 6, 1916 to February 6, 1917, Cummings served as an ambulance driver in Section Sanitaire [Etats-] Unis (SSU) 3 and 4 of the American Field Service (AFS), a voluntary ambulance corps serving with the French Army during World War I. His ambulance units accompanied the French Army on the Toul, Verdun, and Argonne fronts. The American Field Service ceased to exist as an independent ambulance organization when the United States entered the war in 1917, and Cummings subsequently entered Officers' Training Camp at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana on May 1917 and was commissioned Captain, U.S. Infantry on August 15. In January 1918, Cummings was appointed officer in command, 1st Battalion, 334th Infantry; he then sailed back to France in August as General Harry C. Hale’s aide-de-camp, and participated in the Meuse Argonne offensive (also known as the Battle of the Argonne Forest, September 26-November 11, 1918), the final Allied offensive of World War I.
Cummings returned to the United States in March 1919, and was discharged from the U.S. Army on April 24. He moved from Indianapolis to his new home in Dover Plains, New York, and began working at Douglas L. Elliman & Co. at 414 Madison Avenue in New York City as a real estate broker on December 15, 1919. Cummings also served as a member of the Harvard Club of New York, and the University Club of Indiana.
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The Lawrence B. Cummings Collection consists of two bound photographic albums, two folders of loose album pages, two diaries, and personal effects that document Cummings’s service with the American Field Service (AFS.) The bound albums and loose album pages date from September 1916 to February 1917, and depict AFS drivers in Section Sanitaire [Etats-] Unis (SSU) 3 and 4 posed in front of their ambulances, as well as images of camp life, landscapes, field hospitals, and battlefield fortifications and destruction on the Verdun and Argonne fronts. The majority of the photographs in the collection were taken by Lawrence Cummings and fellow SSU 4 ambulance driver Eric Fowler. The loose album pages also include official French Army photographs that portray camp life, soldiers, and battlefield scenes on the Verdun front.
The collection also contains two diaries. The first diary, dated September 15-December 2, 1916, begins with Cummings’s motivations for joining AFS. The second diary, dated December 23, 1916-August 13, 1917, ends with his motivations for entering the U.S. Army after the U.S. joined the war in 1917. Both diaries are written to his two sons and consequently he gives a vivid picture of his work, his environment, living conditions, responsibilities, and detailed descriptions of his fellow drivers. He includes descriptions of trenches, troop movements, AFS unit movements, care given the wounded, aspects of wartime society and civilian behavior, and his response to his work and things he saw during his service. The diaries contain indexes of names and subjects, as well as page numbers that are a later addition. Cummings’s diaries compliment the collection’s photographic material through his descriptions of the battlefields and destruction along the Argonne and Verdun fronts.
The collection also contains personal effects, including the Daily Mail (a British newspaper dated May 23, 1917), wrapping paperthat formerly covered an Indianapolis Ambulance Plaque (undated), and a postcard detailing the discovery of the plaque (dated August 1, 1917.)