Scope and Contents: The Charles H. Horton Collection contains thirteen photographs of American Field Service ambulance drivers in Italy, including pictures of a monastery north of Forli used as a Casualty Clearing Station (CCS), and Horton with fellow drivers at the Regimental Aid Post (RAP) in Monte Grande. The photographs are 3 ½” x 5” black and white prints, and most were captioned (verso) by Horton.
The collection also includes two 8mm films taken by Horton during the war. The first includes scenes taken while in Italy and France in 1944 and 1945. The original 8 mm film is in color and contains around 5 ½ minutes of footage, including scenes of the Regimental Aid Post in Monte Grande, Casualty Clearing Stations, landscape views (of the mountain ridge in Italy held by the British, and of the white cliffs of Dover, England), ambulance drivers (including Horton and Norman Shethar), and the 567 Company transfer to Marseilles on the LSTs (tank landing ships.) The film was reformatted into a VHS and miniDV by the AFS Archives staff, and the reformatted versions are included in the collection. The second film depicts the American Field Service drivers at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they helped British forces assist camp prisoners after the liberation on April 15, 1945. The original 8 mm film is in color and contains about 6 ½ minutes of footage, which includes scenes of the entrance gate to the camp, Hungarian stretcher bearers loading prisoners into AFS ambulances, the line of German SS officers (who were transported out of the camp in AFS ambulances), and the final burning of the camp after the evacuation of the prisoners was complete. The film was reformed into a VHS, DVD, and miniDV by the AFS Archives staff, and the reformatted versions are included in the collection.
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