AFS San Diego

After World War II, 250 American Field Service drivers, including Bob Sawhill, pledged to sustain their tradition of service and created the AFS International Scholarships. Many of these ambulance drivers ferried wounded Allied as well as German soldiers from the battle field to field hospitals. Bob's experience was markedly different. Here is his story:

I was a sophomore at college in 1944 and 4-F in the draft because of a heart murmur. Yet, I wanted to find something to do for the war effort, so I applied in New York to the American Field Service, the volunteer ambulance service. Accepted, I joined 59 members of Unit 57; more than half were teen-agers like me.

We sailed out on the “Ile de France” on May 26, 1945. We changed ships in Scotland a week later, sailing out on the British hospital ship “H.M.S. Strathmore” through the Mediterranean, Suez Canal and Red Sea. We landed at Colombo, Ceylon, June 27th. We now know that we arrived there in error. We were to have landed in Calcutta, and did so on July 16th after sailing on the “Talma”, a P&O cruise ship.

We were re-assembled with other units and sent by train to Secunderabad, Hyderabad, in the south of India. It was ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad who refused to allow Americans in that province because of a controversial article about him published by Colliers Magazine months earlier, so we were issued British summer uniforms right away. Thus we became attached to the British XIV Army which had just driven the Japanese Army out of Burma and was preparing for the invasions of Sumatra and Singapore, with us reportedly going in on the fifth wave.

That action never took place. The atomic bombs were dropped over Japan in August, and the war ended. We missed the invasions by two weeks. To come this far and not be of more help was exasperating. However, I was able to join 16 other men back in Calcutta at “Belvidere”, the viceroy’s summer palace. I was attached to the Indian Red Cross but under British rule. Our work consisted of helping newly released Allied POWs from all over Southeast Asia find their old units and/or a way home. There were too many tragic stories to reiterate here.

More than 300 AFS personnel in Secunderabad were waiting to go home. The British started removing them by air on Oct. 7th from Madras. I wasn’t one of them. Actually, I was trying to team up with an American Red Cross unit going to China. The pay was ten times the $20 the British were paying. But it was not to be.

In mid October, I boarded a British Sterling bomber and sat in the bomb-bay with six others heading home, so we thought. First stop, Afghanistan; then Tel-Aviv for five days; Rabat in Morocco and then London where we boarded a train and ended up in Wales on Oct. 28th.

Time flies when you’re having fun? Boarding the original Queen Elizabeth in November with 13,000 Canadians in Southampton, I learned we were headed for Halifax, Nova Scotia. There were 15 of us squeezed into a stateroom with one bathroom. The crossing was rough and somehow I contracted pneumonia and a medical officer put me on a train headed for Montreal after landing. I was admitted to Montreal General Hospital for several days and was given a new winter uniform when I left.

The final stop was Grand Central Station, New York City at 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 27, 1945, ending an effort half way around the world by ship and back by plane in a six-month period as guest of the AFS and the British government. So closes my World War II story.