Fifty-nine years old, almost blind in one eye, overweight, and suffering from a host of illnesses, former president Theodore Roosevelt was denied his request to lead a division of men into battle during World War I. (There is speculation that Roosevelt’s ridicule of President Woodrow Wilson as “yellow” and a “molly-coddle pacifist” before the war did not help his appeal.) He was, however, able to send overseas what amounted to a small army of Roosevelts—his four sons, Quentin, Archie, Kermit, and Theodore (“Ted”) Jr.; Ted’s wife, Eleanor, who went to work in France with the YMCA; and his son-in-law, Dr. Richard Derby. Twenty-year-old Quentin, the youngest and most jovial of the four boys, was especially eager to serve and, despite poor eyesight, became a fighter pilot (he memorized the military eye chart to pass his physical). Fearless almost to the point of being cocky, Quentin was thoroughly exhilarated by aerial combat. “You get so excited,” he wrote home after his first dogfight, “that you forget everything except getting the other fellow.” On July 11 he described his first kill:
I was out on high patrol with the rest of my squadron when we got broken up, due to a mistake information. I dropped into a turn of a vrille [a dive]—these planes have so little surface that at five thousand you can’t do much with them. When I got straightened out I couldn’t spot my crowd any where, so, as I had only been up an hour, I decided to fool around a little before going home, as I was just over the lines. I turned and circled for five minutes or so, and then suddenly,—the way planes do come into focus in the air, I saw three planes in formation. At first I thought they were Boche, but as they paid no attention to me I finally decided to chase them, thinking they were part of my crowd, so I started after them full speed. I thought at the time it was a little strange, with the wind blowing the way it was, that they should be going almost straight into Germany, but I had plenty of gas so I kept on.
They had been going absolutely straight and I was nearly information when the leader did a turn, and I saw to my horror that they had white tails with black crosses on them. Still I was so near by them that I thought I might pull up a little and take a crack at them. I had altitude on them, and what was more they hadn’t seen me, so I pulled up, put my sights on the end man, and let go. I saw my tracers going all around him, but for some reason he never even turned, until all of a sudden his tail came up and he went down in a vrille. I wanted to follow him but the other two had started around after me, so I had to cut and run. However, I could half watch him looking back, and he was still spinning when he hit the clouds three thousand meters below….
Three days later Quentin was shot down behind enemy lines. After word of Quentin’s death was reported by the media, thousands of condolence letters poured into the Roosevelts’s home in Oyster Bay, New York, and the former president responded to each one with at least a brief note of appreciation. But there was something about a letter from a Mrs. Harvey L. Freeland that particularly struck Roosevelt, and he sent the following handwritten reply.
Sagamore Hill
Aug 14, 1918
Dear Mrs. Freeland,
Last evening, as we were sitting together in the North Room, Mrs. Roosevelt handed me your two letters, saying that they were such dear letters and that I must see them. As yet it is hard for her to answer even the letters she cares for most; but yours have so singular a quality that I do not mind writing you of the intimate things which one can not speak of to strangers.
Quentin was her baby, the last child left in the home nest; on the night before he sailed, a year ago, she did as she always had done and went upstairs to tuck him in bed—the huge, laughing, gentle-hearted boy. He was always thoughtful and considerate of those with whom he came in contact; a week ago a letter from him, written two days before he was killed, came to a devoted member of our family, Mary Sweeny, the chambermaid, who loved Quentin as if she had been his nurse; a gay, merry letter.
It is hard to open the letters coming from those you love who are dead; but Quentin’s last letters, written during his three weeks at the front, when of his squadron on an average a man was killed every day, are written with real joy in the “great adventure.” He was engaged to a very beautiful girl, of very fine and high character; it is heartbreaking for her, as well as for his mother; but they both said that they would rather have him never come back than never have gone. He had his crowded hour, he died at the crest of life, in the glory of the dawn.
My other three boys are just as daring; and if the war lasts they will all be killed unless they are so crippled as to be sent home. Archie apparently has been crippled by his two shell wounds, but has been struggling against being sent home. Ted has been gassed, and is now with his gallant little wife in Paris, with two bullet wounds; he will be back at the front in a few weeks. Kermit won the British Military cross in Mesopotamia, but is now under Pershing. My son in law, Dick Derby, a major in the Medical Corps, has been knocked down by a shell, but after a week in hospital is back at the front. A good record, isn’t it?
All four left their wives, and their children, born and unborn. And in view of your liking the chapter of my autobiography for which I care most, I venture to say that the five boys, who as fighters have won distinction against the greatest modern military nations—I wish I could tell you some of their feats!—are so gentle, and are just as clean and good as girls. And I am just as proud of my daughters and daughters in law as of the boys. And we have such darling little grandchildren, and they are such comforts.
Yes, the two anniversaries I always remember are our engagement day and our wedding day; but I have succeeded in hopelessly befogging myself as to whether my wife’s birthday is on the 8th or 6th of August (it’s really the latter) and every year have to be enlightened on the subject by slightly impatient offspring.
Is your husband in the army? Give him my warm regards; and your mother and father and sister. I wish to see any of you or all of you out here at my house, if you ever come to New York. Will you promise to let me know?
Faithfully yours
Theodore Roosevelt
Incredibly, the Roosevelt family retrieved the mangled axle from Quentin’s plane ana displayed it prominently in their home at Oyster Bay. In 1941, when World War II was declared, Archie, Kermit, and Ted Jr. all served again. Only Archie, who was hit by shrapnel and severely wounded in 1944 in the South Pacific, would come home alive; Ted died of a heart attack over a month after leading troops on D-Day, and Kermit, who had fought depression and alcoholism his entire life, committed suicide on June 4, 1943, while on active duty in Alaska.