Kermit Roosevelt - Military Service in World War I

Military Service in World War I

In 1917 as he was about to be transferred to a Russian branch, the U.S. entered the World War. On 22 August 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 26 August 1918. When the United States joined the war, Roosevelt was transferred to the AEF in Europe, relinquishing his British commission on 28 April 1918. 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.