TEDDY'S BOYS

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Quentin Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr.
Theodore Roosevelt was a warrior to the end. At the age of 58 ,and as an ex president, he asked Woodrow Wilson for permission to lead a volunteer division to fight in France after America declared war on Germany in April 1917. Permission was denied. Roosevelt said that his four boys would fight in his place. The youngest boy, Quentin Roosevelt, joined the Army Air Corps and headed for France. Over the next year he would train in French Nieuport planes which even the French considered to be second rate and dangerous. Because of the extreme cold he caught pneumonia in November 1917 and was in the hospital for three weeks. In June 1918 he was made flight commander of the 95th Aero Squadron. On July 11, 1918 he shot down his first German plane. In a letter to his fiance Flora Payne Whitney, a granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, he said, “I think I got my first Boche,”. During the Second Battle of the Marne, July 14, 1918 his Nieuport was engaged by three German planes and he was shot down, His plane fell behind the German lines in France near the village of Chamery. The Germans used a picture of his dead body lying next to the wreckage for propaganda purposes. His father Theodore was devastated by his death and would never really recover from it. He would die less than a year later in his sleep on January 6, 1918. Theodore's oldest son Theodore Roosevelt Jr. would become a General and die of a heart attack after leading troops on to Utah Beach during the Normandy invasion. Like his father he would earn the Medal of Honor. Quentin and his older brother Theodore are buried in the same military cemetery in Normandy France.
Quentin with a childhood playmate

Quentin lying next to his crashed plane




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