The Car Club Volunteers Who Drove Into World War I’s Mechanized Future

When Britain entered the First World War in August 1914, the Royal Automobile Club did more than offer a gathering place for wealthy motorists. It helped assemble a volunteer force of 25 civilian drivers who brought their own cars to the Allied war effort in France, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The group included racers, aristocrats, adventurers, veterans and automobile businessmen. Among them was 47-year-old Toby Rawlinson, who drove a silver Hudson roadster. Another volunteer, Jimmy Radley, arrived in a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost that he had previously driven through the demanding Alpine Trials. Others supplied vehicles from manufacturers including Diatto, Hispano-Suiza and White Motor Car Company. The volunteers were recruited for the speed and mobility that the British War Office urgently needed. Their expected duties included carrying messages, scouting, transporting officers and serving as ambulance drivers. In practice, they sometimes found themselves close to direct combat, helping identify enemy movements and filling gaps in the lines during the war’s mobile opening months. Rawlinson experienced that danger on August 25, 1914, in Landrecies, France. His car was forced onto a railway embankment by a passing British artillery column, damaging the vehicle’s carburetor and other parts. While he searched for a way to repair it, German soldiers emerged from nearby woodland and fighting began around him. In his later memoir, Rawlinson described machine-gun fire cutting down the advancing German column. He treated the damaged car as an inconvenience compared with the battle unfolding in the street, though the scene left a lasting impression. The volunteers had sailed from Southampton aboard the troopship Gloucester Castle, carrying spare tires, fuel, tools and pumps. Their improvised uniforms included khaki clothing and Royal Automobile Club armbands. Some expected to race through enemy territory with messages; others suspected they would become little more than military taxi drivers. Instead, they encountered the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force, the German advance through Belgium and France, and battles including the Marne, Antwerp and Ypres. Their experience came during the brief period before the Western Front hardened into trenches. In the months that followed, machine guns, artillery, poison gas, tanks and aircraft helped transform warfare into a mechanized and industrial system. All 25 RAC volunteers survived, Smithsonian reported. Their vehicles and driving skills did not merely support the army’s movements; they placed the men among witnesses to the disappearance of an older, horse-centered style of war.