Chapter 32 of 52 · 3969 words · ~20 min read

Part 32

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.

HE MAKES A DOWN

[Illustration:

Captain Kermit Roosevelt]

Quentin became known to his fellow flyers as “Q.” Before the fatal day he had been fighting in the air five weeks. A few days before that last fight Quentin had a very narrow escape. He was cut off by a cloud from his fellows and coming out of the clouds saw three aviators whom he took for Americans. When he got quite close he found they were Boches, and coolly opened fire on them. All three attacked him. Quentin “did” for one of them and got home safe. An account of this is included in Captain McLanahan’s description of Quentin’s last days.

[Illustration:

Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt]

“Our airdrome was north of Verdun, about twenty miles back of the American front line. Quentin had joined us June 1. He had been instructor at the aviation school at Issoudun, and I had formed his acquaintance there. I left Issoudun for patrol work at the front about two months before Quentin was allowed to join us. They liked his work at the aviation school so well that he had a hard time to obtain leave to get into the more perilous work at the front, for which he was always longing.

“Our regular occupation in the patrol service consisted of two flights a day, each lasting from an hour and a half to two hours. As this involved the necessity of going over the enemy lines, it was, of course, extremely trying upon the nerves. I doubt whether anybody, except perhaps the most foolhardy, ever performed this sort of work without feeling greatly exhausted after a few hours of so tense a strain. Nevertheless, we were often required, when circumstances demanded it, to go aloft four or even more times in the course of a day. This was of rare occurrence and only when the enemy showed extreme activity and every resource at our command had to be called into service in opposition.

“Usually a patrol consisted of three squads of from six to eight planes, one squad going to a height of 20,000 feet, the second 12,000, and the third 4,000 feet. They would fly in V formation, the leader about a hundred feet below the level of the next two, these 100 feet lower than those next after them, and so on to the last ones of the squad, who were always the highest.”

July 14 was an exceptionally fine day for the sort of work the squadron was doing. “We went up at eleven o’clock in the forenoon,” says Captain McLanahan, and describes the flight and the fatal fight that followed:

“There were eight of us, all, at that time, Lieutenants—Curtis, of Rochester, N. Y.; Sewall, of Bath, Me.; Mitchell, of Manchester, Mass.; Buford, of Nashville, Tenn.; Roosevelt, Hamilton, Montague, and I. As was customary, we chatted together before we went up, and of course, planned what we were going to do. It was arranged that Lieutenant Hamilton was to lead, and in case of any hitch to his motor Lieutenant Curtis was to take his place in the van.

[Illustration:

Captain Archie Roosevelt

on Fifth Avenue in New York. He was wounded in action.]

[Illustration:

Facsimile of Quentin Roosevelt’s record card in the Ecole de Aerien de Casuaz.

The captain’s remarks at the bottom of the card: “Very good pilot; regular landings; very good shot; excellent military spirit, and very daring.” ]

“There was a rather stiff wind blowing in the direction of the German lines, and when we reached an altitude of about 10,000 feet we began to be carried with great rapidity toward them. We had not yet sighted any enemy airplanes after we had been aloft an hour. Hamilton’s motor went wrong about that time and he had to glide back home. In a few minutes he was followed by Montague, whose motor also had gone back on him.

MEETING THE ENEMY

“Half an hour after this, when we were five miles inside the German lines, we saw six of their Fokker planes coming toward us. They had been concealed until then by clouds between them and us, they flying on the under side of the clouds. Our planes were of the Nieuport type, of the lightest pursuing kind, and in almost every respect like the type the Germans approaching us were using. The chief difference was that they carried stationary motors while ours were rotary ones, which gave us a trifle the advantage in turning. But this was more than neutralized by the very much greater inflammable material in our machines.

“When we got to within 500 feet of each other both sides began firing. The weapons on each side were virtually identical, each Nieuport and each Fokker carrying two machine guns. As each plane had but one occupant, upon whom, of course, devolved the work not only of steering his craft but firing the guns, there was an arrangement by which these two duties could be executed with, so to speak, one movement. The steering gear and the firing and aiming devices were adjusted to a stick in front of the aviator, in such a manner that his hand could clutch all three levers at once and work each by a slight pressure.

“Each of the machine guns carried about 250 rounds of ammunition, and unless it got jammed it was capable of firing the entire lot in half a minute. In order to determine whether the aim is accurate some of the bullets are so constructed that they emit smoke and can thus be seen. These are called tracers. Without them it would be well-nigh impossible to gage one’s range so far up in the air, remote from anything by which comparisons could be made to rectify the judgment in aiming.

“From the moment that I singled out the enemy whom I was to engage in duel I naturally lost sight of everything else and kept my eyes pretty well glued upon him alone. Now and then, of course, I would, when I got a chance, look backward, too. For one can never tell but that another enemy plane, having disposed of its opponent, may pay his respects to another one.

“But if anybody imagines that an aviator engaged in battle with an active opponent gets a chance to help along an associate, or even to pay attention to what is happening to any of the others, he is mistaken. One has to be on the alert for every move the enemy makes, and even do a lot of correct guessing as to what would be the most logical next move for him to make. For it is upon that next move that the entire fortunes of the war for those particular two aviators may hinge.

“After I had fired every round of ammunition, which seemed to be about the same time as my adversary discovered himself to be in the same plight, we drew away from each other and flew toward our respective bases. During our duel my airplane had become separated from the others of our unit and I could see no trace of them. I assumed, however, that they were either still fighting or had also finished and were on their way back home. Somehow I did not think of the third alternative, namely, that anything serious had happened to any of them.

“Indeed, one’s thoughts are so completely directed toward the business in hand, especially during a fight, that there is not a moment’s time that can be devoted to other matters, even those of the dearest, tenderest, or most sacred nature. To divert the mind even for an instant from the grim business of battle itself would be scarcely short of suicidal. And the home-bound journey after the battle is enlivened by so continuous a gauntlet of bursting enemy anti-aircraft shells that they suffice to keep the mind engaged in ways and means of dodging them until the home base is finally reached. During an air-battle, of course, the anti-aircraft guns are silent, for their shells would be equally dangerous for friend and foe.”

ALL BUT QUENTIN RETURNED

Lieutenants Buford and McLanahan arrived after all of the others, except Lieutenant Roosevelt, had returned to the field. They were not worried about him at the time, but when hours went by and he failed to return, they knew that something had gone wrong. Still, they did not think he had been killed. As Captain McLanahan explains:

“We were encouraged to hope for the best by the fact that Quentin had remained out a considerable time longer than the rest of us three days before. On that occasion he had become separated from the squad, I don’t just know in what way, and when we saw him again he jumped out of his airplane in great excitement and so radiant with elation and with so broad a smile that his teeth showed exactly in the same famous way as his father’s used to do. He never reminded us so much of his father as on that occasion.

“He told us that after losing track of us he sighted a group of airplanes which he believed to be ours and headed his airplane toward them. He was too cautious, however, to take anything for granted, and so in steering toward the group he kept himself in the rear of them, and when he got closer he discovered that they had the cross of the Germans painted on them.

“His first impulse was to get away as fast as possible; but then the hero in him spoke up and he decided to avail himself of the chance to reduce the number of our enemies by at least one. And so, flying quite close to the last one of the airplanes, he fired quickly and with such good aim that the plane immediately went down, spinning around, with its nose pointed to the ground.

“‘I guess I got that one all right,’ he said; but he did not wait to see what the final outcome might be, for aviators are full of tricks and, by feigning disaster to their own machine, often succeeded in drawing an overconfident enemy to destruction. Quentin knew this; and moreover, he had another big contract on his hands, namely, to get away from the associates of the man whom he had attacked. They all turned upon him, firing from a dozen machine guns; but in firing his own gun he had wheeled about at the same instant, and in that way had a big handicap over the pursuers. He kept far enough in advance of them to get back within the American lines before they were able to lessen the distance sufficiently to make their shells effective. The rate of speed, by the way, was 140 miles an hour.

“Despite his excitement and the really exceptional achievement, Quentin modestly refrained from declaring positively that he had bagged his man. It was only afterward, when we learned through an artillery observation-balloon that the airplane brought down by Quentin had been seen to strike the earth with a crash, that he himself felt satisfied that he was entitled to be regarded the victor. This was the occasion which brought him the Croix de Guerre.”

When the day passed and Quentin failed to return, his associates still remained hopeful that he had landed in the enemy lines, and had been taken prisoner. But there was further news, bad news, as Captain McLanahan relates:

[Illustration:

Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.]

“Even this forlorn hope was dispelled the following day, when news was received that an observation-balloon’s crew had seen a Nieuport machine fall at Chamery, east of Fère-en-Tardenois, the place where Quentin had gone into the battle.

GERMANS REPORT DEATH

“A few days after that German aviators flying over the American lines dropped notes announcing that Lieut. Quentin Roosevelt had been killed by two bullet wounds in the head and had been buried with military honors by the Germans.

“After the armistice was signed, we saw the aviator who had killed Quentin. He was a non-commissioned officer and one of the most expert flyers in the enemy’s air service. After the armistice he was acting as an inspector in the surrender of German airplanes to the Allies.

“This man said that when he learned that the officer whom he had brought down belonged to so prominent a family in America he felt sorry.

“‘He was identified by a metal identification-plate fastened by a little chain to his wrist,’ said the German, ‘and I was then told of the young man’s prominence and his own personal popularity. Of course, even if I had known during the battle who he was, I would not have hesitated to try my best to down him; because, if I hadn’t, he surely would have downed me.

“‘He made a gallant fight, although I recognized almost from the beginning of our duel that he was not as experienced as some others I had encountered and won out against.

“‘As it was, he dipped and circled and looped and tried in a variety of ways to get above and behind me. It was not at all an easy task for me to get the upper hand and down him.’”

[Illustration:

When the Great American Patriot Died Flyers Dropped Wreaths from the Air Over the Roosevelt Home at Sagamore Hill]

Simple praise this is, but sincere we feel. The German felt sorry for our boy-hero. “He made a gallant fight,” he said. And he was not the only German who was forced to give due admiration to the dauntless American. The enemy buried him with military honors, and marked his grave. The German Cross, however, has been removed from the grave of Quentin. The grave is now simply fenced with stones. The French strew flowers over it. It bears a soldier’s inscription:

“Here rests on the field of honor First Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt, killed in action July, 1918.”

A memorial just as eloquent in its simplicity is the letter from General Pershing to the father of Quentin:

“Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt during his whole career in the air service both as a cadet and as a flying officer was a model of the best type of young American manhood.”

Quentin is a hero—a soldier—an officer—yet most of all he remains to our memory as our ex-President’s youngest boy. Eleanor Reed expresses this lasting appeal in her poem to Quentin, in the New York _Times_:

“Young Roosevelt is dead—and I whose son Is just a little boy, too young to go, Read with bewildered eyes the tales recalled Of pranks the little White House boy had played.”

JUST WHAT HE WANTED

A Restless Seeker After Excitement, the War Filled the Bill for Lieutenant Roberts

Few young men enlisted for the war more frankly in the spirit of adventure than did Lieutenant E. M. Roberts, an American boy, born in Duluth, and seemingly born with the unrest of the winds of the Northwest in his blood. When he was but ten years old he ran away from home in obedience to the restless longing to fare for himself, go whither he listed, and taste the ruggedness of nature in experience. He tried lumbering in the Northwest. He crossed the border into Canada and successively turned his hand to many things—mining, automobile repair, railroad construction, cow-punching, sheep-raising, etc.—getting a liberal education in the “University of Hard Knocks,” as he expressed it, but never finding just the excitement he vaguely yearned for.

He was in Calgary in October, 1914, and by chance learned from a newspaper in which he had wrapped a purchase, that there was war doing in Europe. It struck him that the thing sought, the desired excitement, was now ready to hand. He met an old friend and talked the news with him. The friend told him that there had been a call that morning for men for service in Europe. “Let’s join!” Both were of the same mind; both were ready for adventure. Next morning he enlisted as a member of the 10th Canadian Infantry Battalion. But the officer in charge of the barracks knew Roberts, and recalling that he was familiar with mechanics, transferred him to a mechanical transport section, not at all to his liking, mechanics being but a tame affair.

In time he went with the battalion to France as driver of a lorry. He got a dose of gas at Ypres and was sent back to England for hospital treatment. On recovery he was returned to France as Section Sergeant, his duty being to scout the roads ahead on a motor cycle. He found that he was getting very little out of the war but hard work, plodding knee deep in mud much of the time while up there the flyers were having a jolly, enviable time. Ambition to get into the Royal Flying Corps seized him and never let go of him, but it was long before the opportunity to join came to him. Much experience of many kinds came his way, despatch riding among the rest, before the happy day when he was attached to an air squadron as gunner on probation, the getting of which position was in itself an adventure, as is duly set forth in _A Flying Fighter_, the intensely interesting story of his career told by Roberts himself.

Though on the way he was yet far from his goal. He had first to go into the trenches to learn what infantrymen had to go through. He got a thorough lesson, which included prowls in No Man’s Land, charging enemy trenches and plunging in to prod with the bayonet and fling hand grenades and much like matter rather adapted, one would imagine, to disqualify an aspirant for service in the air, for rising above ground. But he arrived in due time at the dignity of an accepted aviator, and made his first flight. Then came the excitement of shooting down his first Hun, but we pass that and many other arresting incidents and exploits of his apprenticeship to come to his account of an exceptional sort of encounter with hostile planes that has in it all the elements of dramatic surprise.

He was assigned to pilot duty with a scout and fighting squadron doing service in France, and his first turn of service consisted of patrol duty for three days running. It was an uneventful start, nothing occurring in the three days. On the fourth day he went up again on patrol to 20,000 feet. He was looking for Huns up there but found none. As it was very cold he decided to go down a way, and shut off power. He says:

“At the level of 18,000 feet, I found myself sweeping along a very large peak of cloud. Intending to spoil its pretty formation I dived into it, and coming out on the other side, found myself along side of a Hun plane of the Albatross type. [Roberts was in a Spad.] I had no intimation at all that a Hun was present, and I guess he was in the same position.

“THE HUN WAVED AT ME AND I WAVED AT HIM”

“I suppose he was as much surprised as I was when he saw me emerging from the cloud. Neither of us could shoot at the other for the reason that the guns of the machines we were flying were fixed to the machine so that the machine itself has to be pointed.

“We were so close together that this could not be done without our ramming one another, which both of us had to avoid if we did not wish to crash to the earth together.

“The Hun waved at me and I waved at him.

“We found ourselves in a very peculiar situation. I was so close to him that I could see with the naked eye every detail of his machine. His face also I could see quite clearly, even to the wrinkles around his mouth.

“There was something odd in our position. I had to smile at the thought that we were so close together and yet dared not harm one another. The Hun also smiled. Then I reached down to feel the handle on my pressure reservoir to make sure that it was in its proper place, for I knew that one of us would soon have to make a break.

“I had never before met a Hun at such close quarters in the air and though we flew parallel to one another for only a few minutes, the time seemed like a week. I remembered some of the tactics told me by some of the older and best fighters in the corps, and was wondering how I could employ them. Finally a thought occurred to me. Two machines flying at the same height are not necessarily on exactly the same level, as they keep going up and down for about 20 feet.

“I was flying between the Hun and his own lines and I had fuel for another hour and a quarter anyway. I wanted to make sure of this bird, but decided to play a waiting game. We continued our flight side by side.

“After a while, however, much sooner than I expected, the Hun began to get restless and started to maneuver for position; like myself he was utilizing the veriest fraction of every little opportunity in his endeavor to out-maneuver the antagonist. Finally, the Hun thought he had gotten the lead.

“I noticed that he was trying to side-slip, go down a little, evidently for the purpose of shooting me from underneath, but not far enough for me to get a dive on him. I was not quite sure as yet that such was really his intention, but the man was quick. Before I knew what had happened he had managed to put five shots into my machine, but all of them missed me.

THE HUN SPINS EARTHWARD