Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [316]
His pocket case showed him to be Lieut. Quentin Roosevelt of the Aviation section of the U.S.A. The personal belongings of the fallen airman are being carefully kept with a view of sending them later to his relatives.
The earthly remains of the brave young airman were buried with military honors by the German airmen near where he fell.
* “The good Lord only had ten.”
* Courtly in manner, courageous in action.
* A family friend was visiting.
CHAPTER 28
Sixty
Ye gods that have a home beyond the world,
Ye that have eyes for all man’s agony,
Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen,—
Look with a just regard,
And with an even grace,
Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king,
Here on a suffering world where men grow old,
And wander like sad shadows till, at last,
Out of the flare of life,
Out of the whirl of years,
Into the mist they go,
Into the mist of death.
WHEN AMERICAN FORCES ADVANCED through the tiny village of Chamery, in the Marne province of France, they came upon a cross-shaped fragment of a Nieuport fighter sticking out of a field just east of the road to Coulonges. Some German soldier had taken a knife and scratched on it the word ROOSEVELT. It marked Quentin’s grave, and a few yards away the rest of his plane lay wrecked. By the time the last troops passed on toward Reims, nothing was left except the cross. All other bits of the Nieuport had been reverently stolen.
The autopsy performed by the Germans before Quentin’s burial indicated that he had been killed before he crashed. Two bullets had passed through his brain. He had been thrown out on impact, and photographed where he fell.
WOODROW WILSON’S TELEGRAM of Saturday, 20 July 1918 (“Am greatly distressed that your son’s death is confirmed. I had hoped for other news”), was not the last blow to strike the Roosevelts that weekend. It was followed within hours by a cable from Eleanor stating that Ted had been hurt in action. She said his wound was not serious. But she had also been reassuring about Quentin.
Ted was a casualty of the counteroffensive headlined in forty-two-point type across the top of Sunday morning’s front page of The New York Times: ALL GERMANS PUSHED BACK OVER THE MARNE; ALLIES GAIN THREE MILES SOUTH OF SOISSONS; NOW HOLD 20,000 PRISONERS AND 400 GUNS. Under such a banner, the story about him (“Oldest Roosevelt Son Is Wounded: News of Theodore’s Injury Comes on Heels of Confirmation of Quentin’s Death”) drew the eye much more than another given exactly the same columnar weight: “Ex-Tsar of Russia Killed by Order of Ural Soviet.”
Theodore and Edith therefore had an added reason to attend early mass and adjust, or try to adjust, to the enormity of the void that had opened so suddenly in their landscape. But they had to brace for a special order of service. That Sunday happened to be the third of the month, when the names of all parish members serving the country were read out. Quentin’s was not included. He was the first citizen of Oyster Bay to be killed in the war.
They returned home in luxurious sunshine to receive what promised to be an unendurable number of condolence calls. One, late in the afternoon, was from Flora. She was, in Ethel’s words, “perfectly wonderful … calm and controlled.” A less sentimental person might have perceived that the girl was in a state of near catatonia, so stiff with shock that she could neither think nor feel. Flora wanted to be alone, but irrationally wanted to share her solitude with those equally bereft—the Colonel above all. As he received mourners and endured their attempts at comfort, he gave no sign of desolation,