- Model-T Fords, first manufactured in 1908, began rolling off Detroit assembly lines in large numbers in 1914, just in time to aid the French against their German attackers. The “Tin Lizzies” proved well-suited to the task of transporting the dead and wounded from the first-aid stations, postes de secours, behind the lines, to the field hospitals. Three soldiers could be carried in the truck bed, two more on the front fenders—one on each—and, if need be, two wounded in the cab along with its American driver.
In the northeast corner of France lies the small city of Verdun. Here, during World War I, in a single 10-month battle in 1916, German and French casualties amounted to more than 750,000.
Verdun serves as the geographic center of the thought-provoking WWI documentary Model T’s to War: American Ambulances to the Western Front, 1914-1918. The UMass Amherst documentary film focuses on an overlooked subject—the contributions of 2,500 American volunteers, including many college students, some only 17 years old, who served as ambulance drivers in the American Field Service prior to America’s entry into the war.
The losses catalogued in the film barely scratch the surface of the human toll suffered in “The Great War,” a war in which nine million people died.
Model T’s to War is the fourth collaboration between Libby Klekowski ’91, Betty Wilda ’93, and emeritus professor of biology and adjunct professor of history Ed Klekowski. Wilda, of the UMass Amherst News Office, is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker (Faith in Providence, and The Great Flood of 1936, this latter film also with the Klekowskis). The team is known for the PBS documentaries Dynamite, Whiskey and Wood and Under Quabbin, the latter produced with Michael Volmar ’92G, ’98PhD, and Jonathan Williams.
The Klekowskis discovered the story while visiting their daughter who lives in Brussels and has a weekend house not far from Verdun. They researched and wrote the script, selected sites in France to be filmed, and provided on-site narration. Wilda researched period music, film footage, and archival sources. She also shot and edited the film. Together, the team raised production money.
Campus support played an important role in the production. The Alumni Association largely underwrote the project, along with generous support from the Florence Gould Foundation and WGBY. The provost office’s Richard Rogers made the state-of-the-art high-definition camera a reality.
“We wanted to support this film for several reasons,” says Norma Heim, director of Alumni Communications and Marketing. “In honor of our alumni who served in World War I, the resident expertise of the filmmakers, and the reach WGBY has within our alumni community. This film will have national visibility for years to come.”
To visit the hills above Verdun now is to marvel at nature’s capacity to heal. Although these WWI battlegrounds are marked by shrines, the nearby spruce and hardwood forests where so many men died have renewed themselves. Ninety-year-old trees are now being harvested for lumber.
The filmmakers walk us through these woods over a period of several summers, sharing with us their amazement at the beautiful countryside, despite its history. Surprisingly, even after 90 years, the trenches and battlegrounds still contain artifacts from the war: rusty barbed wire hangs from steel pickets that are nicked and cut from bullets and shell splinters; German “potato-masher” hand grenades hide among the fallen leaves; and unexploded artillery shells are abundant in the woods, fields, and even in streambeds. Eroded trenches expose leather strapping from rotted uniforms along with spent bullets and occasional bone fragments.
“There is still an incredible feeling of sadness in the landscape, a sense of sorrow that is palpable,” says Wilda. After years of warfare at Verdun, the main combatants, Germany and France, ended up just 200 yards from where they had originally begun. After a day in the field, Wilda would in the evening sometimes find herself in tears, reliving the deaths and bombs and the devastation that took place here. “During a thunderstorm one night, I thought ‘This is what these people were constantly hearing.’” The size and number of the cemeteries haunted her; she says, “They were everywhere.”
The filmmakers wove historical records into their film including the diaries and letters of the volunteers. UMass Amherst faculty, alumni, and students served as readers included Reverand Doug McGonagle, ’87, ’95, of the Newman Center, and Timothy Howd, Gilbert McCauley, Julie K. Nelson, and Julian Olf from the Theater Department, among others. Kenneth Irwin ’02 narrates the film carrying the viewer seamlessly from scene to scene.
On the Amherst campus, Memorial Hall is the home of the UMass Amherst Alumni Association. Built in 1920-21, it honors the WWI dead, and those who served and died in subsequent wars. Above the North Room fireplace, there is a list of the Mass Aggie students and graduates who lost their lives in WWI. The film’s opening scene features a shot of this list.
DVDs of Model T’s to War are available at shopwgby.org or by calling 888-255-9231.
