The American Fund for French Wounded

The photo above was taken in Boston, Massachusetts, during the First World War.  A press snipe on the back provides some information:

This is a typical load of supplies sent weekly by the American Fund for French Wounded, 304-306 Boylston Street to the French military hospitals.

The men seem to be in good spirits:

 

The American Fund for French Wounded was formed in December 1915 by American women living in France.  Women in the United States were recruited to join the organization as volunteers.  According to Wikipedia:

The original work of the AFFW was confined to sending supplies to emergency hospitals in France and later expanded to re-establishing the destroyed communities of the region.  The AFFW ran a women’s volunteer motor corps out of Paris that carried supplies to hospitals throughout France and created temporary depots in small villages.  Drivers usually performed their own maintenance work.  Volunteers in the Civilian Committee lived in or near villages in northern France, making structural repairs, replanting fields, and delivering provisions and supplies.

The organization’s American headquarters were located in New York City with additional chapters, called committees, in cities throughout the United States.  The Yale Archives website says there were “some 60 chapters,” while the New York Public Library Archives & Manuscripts website says there were “committees in eighty United States municipalities.”

Once supplies arrived in France, they were warehoused at the Paris Depot.  The entrance can be seen in the photo below from the National Archives:

The next photo, taken in September 1918, shows a group of AFFW drivers in their uniforms.  With the war almost over, this group was attached to the Service de Santé of the French Government.

 

The uniform of a volunteer named Lucy Kennedy Shaffer is in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

The most famous AFFW volunteer may be the modernist writer and art collector Gertrude Stein.  Beginning in 1916, she and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, delivered supplies to hospitals in the south of France in a Ford van they called “Auntie.”

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I knew nothing about the AFFW when I bought the photo taken in Boston.  Looking at it now, I wonder where those boxes of supplies ended up and whether they brought comfort to people who were suffering.  I’m also amazed at the logistics of such an effort and, perhaps more than anything, I’m impressed by the dedication of all the women who made it happen.