Jun 05, 2008 - Sale 2148

Sale 2148 - Lot 371

Price Realized: $ 2,880
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
"THE SHELLS WERE DROPPING AND THE GAS WAS THICK" (WORLD WAR I.) Taliaferro, Fontaine N. Manuscript diary of an American ambulance driver on the front in France. 192 pages. 4to, 1/4 calf, cover very worn; interior clean except for soiling on endpapers. Most dates completed in manuscript except for a one-month period in September-October 1917. Vp, 28 May 1917 to 27 May 1918
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Additional Details

Fontaine Newton Taliaferro III (b. 1894) was from a well-to-do Hicksville, Long Island family. After attending the University of Virginia, he enlisted as an ambulance driver. He arrived in August 1917 and was attached to the French army. He survived the war, and later sold insurance and ran for public office on Long Island.

Taliaferro's diary covers his initial enlistment and last days at home, but was mostly written in France. He spent much of his time at base near the Alsace region and later near Dunkirk, and the diary is filled with details of his mechanical work on the various Ford ambulances under his care, as well as his sightseeing activities and carousing on pay day. Sometimes he got closer to combat: "I just got across the old bridge and a big shell hit it and blew it all to the dickens. All the way up that damn hill the shells kept coming over and my old flivver just wouldn't go fast enough" (17 December 1917). He was awarded the Croix de Guerre in May 1918, possibly for this incident: "I was up this morning at four oclock to go out and tow Howell . . . We wasted no time because the shells were dropping and the gas was thick" (11 May 1918). with--2 letters from family members received while at the front 2 small photographs of Taliaferro and his shelled ambulance 5 newspaper clippings mentioning Taliaferro by name, 1918-1921 2 partially completed inventory books for his ambulance and other material found with the diary. an entertaining and sometimes riveting world war i diary.