Chema Cabrero Models Icm's Ford T Ambulance

Automobile manufacture in the United States was not interrupted during World War I, but in 1917 and 1918 most American automakers produced some form of military vehicle.

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The sturdiness and ubiquity of the Model T Ford made it, too, a candidate for war work, and Ford delivered 5,745 ambulances during the conflict. In all, the company supplied 39,000 vehicles of all types to the Allies during the war and by 1 November 1918 no fewer than 4,362 Model T ambulances had been shipped overseas.

The light wooden body was mounted on a standard Model T auto chassis. The four-cylinder engine produced about 20hp. There was no self-starter; the engine had to be cranked by hand. This vehicle was equipped with an early form of automatic transmission and could carry three litters or four seated patients and two more could sit with the driver. Canvas ‘pockets’ covered the litter handles that stuck out beyond the tailgate. Many American field service and Red Cross volunteer drivers, including writers Ernest Hemingway and Bret Harte and cartoonist Walt Disney, drove Model T ambulances. ‘Hunka Tin’, a poem written as a parody on Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Gunga Din’, appeared in the American Field Service Bulletin and was used in Ford dealers’ advertising throughout the United States. The final stanza read:

An unabashed takeoff of Rudyard Kipling’s Gunga Din, this Hunka Tin version eloquently described the feelings of soldiers toward the Ford Model T, a vitally important component of the Allied war effort in World War I.

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