Do you know that young boy?

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Now this is an interesting picture. It was taken in France in 1918, just after WW1 had ended and the young man in uniform we see standing next to that wooden-wheeled ambulance is a young American boy who’d volunteered to join the Red Cross to serve his country abroad.

We wonder if you have seen this shot before and know who that young boy is. We hadn’t. The story goes that, at 16, he was too young to join the army but found out that the Red Cross Ambulance Corps would accept volunteers as young as 17. And so he altered the birth date on his passport and went on to become an ambulance driver in Europe…

By the way, there’s a big clue on the car’s canvas side as the drawing may be considered as the very start of the empire that would make this teenager world famous a few years later. And the car? Do feel free to enlighten us with information about that, too.

Words by Jeroen Booij. Picture courtesy of Red Cross.

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