In the front row of the middle section of burials.

The remains of Richard Nelville Hall, an American Ambulance driver in WWI.

Richard N. Hall of Ann Arbor, Michigan volunteered as an ambulance driver with the Ambulance of the American Hospital of Paris just after graduating from Dartmouth College in the spring of 1915.

After serving a short time in Paris, Hall was assigned to American Ambulance Section Three which was attached to the French 66th Division, then engaged in fighting in the newly recaptured region of Alsace. Section Three was an all-volunteer American ambulance section composed primarily of young, wealthy Ivy League men who had volunteered on their own volition to serve as non-combatant ambulance drivers. Hall completed his first three month volunteer period and reenlisted twice more.

In the early morning hours of Christmas Day, December 25, 1915 while on his way to a front line aid station during the French attack on German positions on the Hartsmannswillerkopf mountain, Hall's ambulance was struck by a random German artillery shell and he was killed instantly. Hall became the first American ambulance volunteer to be killed in WWI. (He was also the first resident of the State of Michigan and the first graduate of Dartmouth to lose his life in the Great War.). Hall was buried in a small French military cemetery in the village of Moosch on December 27 and within a few days of his burial his comrades began erecting a rough stone cairn to commemorate the spot where Hall was killed. As the drivers would pass by the location, they would stop to add stones to the growing memorial. Once completed the cairn was topped by a cross constructed by wood recovered from the wreckage of his ambulance. Several photos of the cairn was taken, as well as a charcoal drawing. The cairn was mentioned in several letters and diary entries.

See site Willer-sur-Thur, Richard N. Hall Cairn - American Ambulance Field Service for more informaiton.

Source of information and photos: Thomas William Fife, author of The Harvard Section - The History of American Field Service Section Three Volume One 1914-1915.

HALL Richard