Of these four sons Kermit received his cross for bravery. Archibald
and Theodore rose steadily from rank to rank—wounds and honor marking
their path. And Quentin gave his life. There is something more than
fortitude in the words of the proud, strong, old man bearing up against
the saddest of tidings:
“Quentin’s mother and I are very glad he got to the front and had the
chance to render some service to his country, and to show the stuff
there was in him before his fate befell him.”
Quentin Roosevelt was not yet twenty-one. He was born in Washington,
November 19, 1897, while his father was Assistant Secretary of the
Navy. After 1901 Quentin, starting out as the “White House baby,” kept
Washington interested and amused for seven years.
Sturdy, impetuous, frank, and democratic, he was friends with
everybody. He rode locomotives between Washington and Philadelphia with
his chums, the engineers and firemen of the Baltimore & Ohio and the
Pennsylvania.
Meantime, he was captain also of a crew of warrior Indians recruited
from members of his classes in a public school.
One day, during an illness of his brother Archie, Quentin decided that
a sight of a pet pony might prove better than the White House doctor’s
prescriptions.
Without waiting for permission he went out to the stables, introduced
the Shetland into one of the private elevators, and had the little
horse on the way into his sick brother’s room before he was stopped.
As recorded by the New York _Times_: “Quentin’s life while in
Washington—he was running around here in kilts and afterward in short
trousers when his father was President—was just the adventurous
childhood of the boy who later slammed his motor cycle into a tree
at Oyster Bay when he was trying to establish a new speed record
and smiled when a home-assembled automobile took a corner under his
guidance on one wheel. He was not afraid for himself and worried only
about the expense of rebuilding the motor cycle.”
Quentin was sent to Harvard. He took a prominent part in athletics. He
inherited his father’s pluck and determination. Like his father, too,
Quentin suffered from a defect of vision. That is why when the first
officers training-camp was organized and Archie was admitted and won a
commission, Quentin, on account of his eyes, was rejected.
He thereupon applied for enlistment in the Canadian Flying Corps. That
was in April, 1917. When the United States decided to send troops
to Europe he was transferred to the United States Signal Corps as a
private.
He underwent a brief period of training at Mineola. He reached France a
few weeks after Archie, who, we remember, was then a Captain. Theodore,
Jr., was already commanding one of the first American battalions to go
under fire. Kermit also had by that time sailed for the war zone.