[pp.127-128]
The Norton-Harjes organization was closely aligned with the American Field Service, established in 1915 by A. Piatt Andrew, a political economics professor at Harvard whose efforts at recruitment there paid off more handsomely than Richard Norton's did. Though their benefits in the field were comparable, the men of the American Field Service prided themselves in their posh headquarters at 21 rue Raynouard atop Passy, a hill in suburban Paris. An enormous château, it served also as post office and clubhouse. The American Field Service had many transport sections, which the Norton-Harjes did not have, and over eight hundred ambulance drivers. Ambulance driving was considered more hazardous duty than camion driving and filled up first. The volunteers of both units worked without pay, though the French government insisted on giving each American driver five cents a day, the equivalent wage of the French military troops. The Norton-Harjes trained its men for two and a half to three weeks before sending them into active duty, whereas American Field Service men trained for a week. Many thought the esprit de corps better in the Norton-Harjes. The men in it were "better disciplined and a more snappily dressed outfit than their competitors, for whom wearing a uniform was sometimes optional. When fatalities were tallied after the two services were disbanded(all American ambulance services in Europe were federalized by the government in 1918), the American Field Service reported twenty-one Harvard students killed and a total of one hundred fifty-one in all. The Norton-Harjes outfit claimed no fatalities. Among the American Field Service drivers who survived and became known later for their distinguished careers in writing were Louis Bromfield, Malcolm Cowley, Harry Crosby, Julian Green, Dashiell Hammett, Sidney Howard, and William Seabrook. Ernest Hemingway was neither in the Norton-Harjes nor the American Field Service, but arrived in Europe after these groups disbanded and served with the American Red Cross in Italy. The most notable Norton-Harjes men in the field of letters were Dos Passos, E. E. Cummings, Robert Hillyer, John Howard Lawson, and William Slater Brown.
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