Ambulance museums, there is at least one in Canada and the USA

Ambulances in the 1950s and 60s were a far cry from what we think of when we hear the term ambulance today. There was no 911, no EMS service.

Instead, ambulances were the property of gas stations, funeral homes and factories.

If a call came in the gas station attendant would put away the pump and race out to the scene.

Or if it were the funeral home that got the call, they’d race out to pick up the patient.

But the third group that had ambulances — factories and workplaces — is St. Catharines Auto Body
sold their cars, 52 in 1952.

Factories didn't licence, and rarely used their ambulances and firetrucks, one Pontiac was found with only 7,000 miles on it, in Niagra http://www.niagarathisweek.com/community-story/5042518-repatriating-a-piece-of-niagara-s-past/ because it went from duty to barn, and slept the last 40 years away.

http://ctmhv.com/The_Village/ems.htm

Seventy-one years ago, a young soldier left his World War II ambulance in a vehicle “graveyard” in Germany and returned home to Wisconsin. Last year, he found that ambulance in Albuquerque.

Thomas Grasser, 91, was visiting the New Mexico Museum of Military History last summer when he realized the museum’s ambulance was his “home on wheels” in Europe during World War II.

Grasser lives in Albuquerque now, but he grew up in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The Army drafted him just  six days after high school in June of 1943, and although he didn’t know how to drive, he was designated as an ambulance driver and trained in California.

Grasser finished basic training at the end of 1943 and shipped out to England at the beginning of 1944.

The invasion of France on D-Day had begun. About three weeks later, Grasser and his unit landed on Omaha Beach.

When the strafing planes came to the ambulances, they pulled up and stopped shooting until they were back over supply trucks. The pilots “respected the red cross” on the ambulances, he said.

By the end of the war, Grasser had traveled through France, Belgium and Luxembourg to Germany. His company evacuated 25,000 patients between Omaha Beach and Aichach, Germany, and helped liberate two concentration camps, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

"We lived in it, we slept in it, we carried a lot of wounded in it,” he said. “It was our home.” Now that ambulance is sitting in the New Mexico Museum of Military History in Albuquerque.

http://argunners.com/veteran-finds-wwii-ambulance-71-years/
http://www.koat.com/news/it-was-our-home-vet-says-of-ambulance-after-chance-reunion/36917762

Grasser was driving an Army ambulance through some of the bloodiest fighting, including the Battle of the Bulge, in the European Theater of World War II.

For his service to his country and to France, Grasser, was awarded the Bronze Star and the French Legion of Honour.

These days, he volunteers at the visitors information center in Albuquerque’s Old Town.

http://www.abqjournal.com/587971/news/a-special-salute-for-wwii-veteran.html

1917 Ford Model T ambulance, auctioned off by RM Auctions in October of 2010 at the Hershey Lodge

http://www.boldride.com/ride/1917/ford-model-t-ambulance/