author
Philip Sidney Rice
1878–1927
An American volunteer ambulance driver in World War I, he wrote vivid firsthand accounts of service on the Western Front. His books bring Verdun and the work of the American Field Service into sharp, personal focus.
1 Audiobook
An American Crusader at Verdun
by Philip Sidney Rice
About the author
Before he became an author, Philip Sidney Rice was an American Field Service volunteer in France during World War I. Born in 1878, he sailed for France in May 1917 and served as an ambulance driver, including at Verdun, where his courage under fire was formally praised by the French Army.
Rice turned those experiences into memoirs that preserve the daily reality of wartime medical service. His best-known works include An Ambulance Driver in France and An American Crusader at Verdun, both published in 1918 and centered on what he saw and endured on the Western Front.
He died in 1927 at the age of 48. Today, his writing is valued as a direct, personal record of an American volunteer's war experience—less about grand strategy than about danger, endurance, and the human side of the conflict.