Captain Kermit Roosevelt,

[Voltigeur]

© IWM (Q 24654)The American President's (T.Roosevelt) son, Captain Kermit Roosevelt, who served in Mesopotamia in 1917 crossing the Khasradal Ford on the Aq Su, 29 April 1918.


He attended the Plattsburg School for officers from May to July 1917 but resigned from the U.S. Army to join the British Army. On August 22, 1917, Roosevelt was appointed an honorary captain in the British Army, and saw hard fighting in the Near East, later transferring to the United States Army. While his other brothers had had summer training at Plattsburg, New York, Roosevelt had missed out on this training.

Roosevelt joined the British Army to fight in the Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) theater of World War I. He was attached to the 14th Light Armoured Motor Battery of the Machine Gun Corps, but the British High Command decided they could not risk his life and so they made him an officer in charge of transport (Ford Model T cars). Within months of being posted to Mesopotamia, he mastered spoken as well as written Arabic and was often relied upon as a translator with the locals. He was awarded a Military Cross on August 26, 1918.

Roosevelt relinquished his British commission on April 28, 1918 was transferred to the AEF in France. In 1918, he learned that his youngest brother Quentin, a pilot, had been shot down over France and had been buried by the Germans with full military honors.

He was commissioned a captain in the United States Army on May 12, 1918 and commanded Battery C, 7th Artillery of the 1st Division. He participated in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive near the end of the war. He returned to the United States on March 25, 1919 and was discharged from the Army.