Ed Schuyler

Ed Schuyler is an American volunteer in the ambulance service whose story is defined less by a declared political program than by how he moves through wartime institutions: skeptical of military authority, quick to turn an awkward order into an opportunity, and able to use personal connections when his companions are stranded. His detachment, humor, and resourcefulness make him a counterpoint to Richard Ellsworth Savage’s more persistent effort to explain his pacifist position.

Identity and Place in the Section

Schuyler belongs to the circle of American ambulance volunteers serving alongside French forces. The account places him among Richard Ellsworth Savage’s companions, including Steve Warner, Ripley, and Fred Summers, though it supplies little about his life before the service. Their shared routines—meals, arguments, and movement between postings—make the section a social unit as well as a work assignment. Schuyler’s role emerges through these collective episodes rather than through a separate account of his background or private aims.

The section’s experience shifts between ordinary pleasures and the pressure of the front. After the men move to the Argonne, Richard Ellsworth Savage watches French soldiers pass toward attacks while the roads carry men and munitions toward Verdun. When the section is eventually disbanded and its members sent back to Paris, the change is administrative as well as personal: the United States Army is taking over the ambulance service attached to the French. The volunteers receive copies of the section’s citation, and Dick Norton dismisses them as gentlemen volunteers in a speech delivered under shellfire. Schuyler’s later movements begin in the wake of that dissolution, when the former group’s common posting no longer determines what happens next.

Orders and an Unexpected Italian Tour

A later episode finds Schuyler among four volunteers ordered to report to Rome: Richard Ellsworth Savage, Warner, Ripley, and Schuyler. The men are not told clearly what has prompted their removal. Their colleagues look at them suspiciously and seem uneasy about speaking to them; Sheldrake says he has heard the phrase seditious utterances and that an Italian intelligence officer has been asking about them. The uncertainty makes the orders feel less like a routine transfer than a sudden exclusion. The men leave without saying goodbye, and Feldmann drives them to Vicenza before handing over their movement orders and departing without a handshake.

At the station, Schuyler reads the military passes and turns the group’s apparent disgrace into a joke: as he sees it, the American Red Cross is giving them a free tour of Italy. His response does not undo the unexplained order or establish what he believes about the allegations. It does, however, show how he handles the uncertainty: rather than dwell on the suspicion surrounding them, he recasts their enforced movement as a chance to travel. Richard Ellsworth Savage and Ripley extend the joke by imagining that they should keep out of Rome until the revolution, or enter it with the Austrians.

The four board a first-class compartment despite orders specifying second class, relying on their inability to understand Italian when the conductor challenges them. Their route then becomes an improvised sightseeing journey. They stop in Verona, continue toward Rome, and divert through other cities rather than proceeding directly. When officials question their orders, they plead ignorance of the language and say they have taken the wrong train. At Florence, they evade being put on an express to Rome and continue by local train toward Assisi; the journey proceeds through further stops before they reach Orvieto. Schuyler is part of this collective evasion, whose comic energy contrasts with the disciplinary process that set the men in motion.

Rome: Connections Put to Practical Use

Once in Rome, the consequences of the orders become harder to dismiss. Richard Ellsworth Savage goes to the American Red Cross office to ask what the trouble is and is told, in vague terms, that the matter involved indiscretion and is closed. While Savage and Warner spend an afternoon without money for lunch or a drink, Schuyler and Ripley return in high spirits. Schuyler has encountered Colonel Anderson, an old friend of his father who is on a mission investigating the American Red Cross. He has explained his difficulties and shared information about what he describes as small graft at the Milan office.

The encounter changes the group’s immediate circumstances. Anderson buys Schuyler lunch and drinks, lends him a hundred dollars, and arranges a job in the publicity department. Schuyler does not keep these advantages to himself: he sets the others up with meals, takes them to Tivoli and the Lake of Nemi in a staff car, and ultimately arranges their passage to Paris with captain’s ratings on their transport orders. His usefulness lies in converting an accidental meeting into concrete assistance. The episode also sharpens the contrast between Savage’s attempt to secure a clear hearing about his beliefs and Schuyler’s more successful navigation of the organization through acquaintance, information, and an available position.

Paris and Narrative Significance

The group’s arrival in Paris leads to different choices. Warner goes to the American Red Cross office to arrange a return home and says he intends to claim conscientious-objector status. Ripley joins the French artillery school at Fontainebleau. Schuyler’s own next step is not detailed here; the account instead follows Savage’s continued attempts to make the American Red Cross hear his position. Schuyler’s part in getting the group to Paris therefore closes on a practical achievement, not a stated resolution of his political or military convictions.

Across these episodes, Schuyler is portrayed through actions that alter the group’s immediate prospects: he treats transfer orders with irreverence, participates in the detour through Italy, finds a useful contact in Rome, and shares the benefits of that contact with his companions. The narrative does not make him the spokesman for the volunteers’ pacifism, nor does it explain the allegations that led to the orders. Instead, his buoyant response to bureaucratic uncertainty supplies a comic countercurrent to Savage’s frustration with the refusal to hear him. Schuyler’s resourcefulness brings the group food, money, travel, and passage to Paris, even as the underlying institutional conflict remains unresolved.