To the aid of Picardy - American women in the ACDF, 1917-1924

In 1917, as World War I raged, two American women, Anne Morgan and Anne Murray Dike, set up the Civilian Section of the American Fund for French Wounded (AFFW) at the Château de Blérancourt in Picardy.

Renamed the American Committee for Devastated France (ACDF) in 1918, the humanitarian organization delivered essential relief to the civilian population in and around Soissons, a region battered by fighting and bombing, and occupied by German forces.

The American volunteers assembled a team of doctors, "visiting nurses," chauffeuses (drivers), and social workers, who, in addition to providing emergency aid, introduced measures to rebuild the area's agricultural, economic, and social infrastructure. Designed to help disaster victims become self-sufficient, the practices they implemented have since become classics of contemporary social policy: targeted aid for women and children, access to reading for all, vocational training, and social rehabilitation.

Intended as a reference on the ACDF, the present volume is based on archives, letters from volunteers, and a unique photographic collection kept at the Franco-American Museum in Blérancourt. An account of the Committee's history and operations, it also examines how the population of Picardy survived and recovered during and after the World War I. Above all, it tells the inspiring story of two women and their collaborators whose courage and struggle for freedom were simply extraordinary.