Service in World War II
By 14 October 1939, when Britain was at war with Germany, Roosevelt had negotiated a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Middlesex Regiment with the assistance of his friend, Winston Churchill, who was by then First Lord of the Admiralty. His first task was to lead a contingent of British volunteers for the Winter War in Finland. According to a contemporary story published in Picture Post, he had resigned from the British Army to lead the expedition. However, before the expedition could be launched, Finland made peace with Russia. Roosevelt served with distinction in a raid into Norway and was later sent to North Africa, where there was little action at the time. He resumed drinking and was debilitated by an enlarged liver complicated by a resurgence of malaria. At the end of 1940, he returned to England and was discharged from the army on health grounds on 2 May 1941, by which time he had once again reached the rank of captain. Roosevelt appealed this discharge all the way to the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who upheld the medical discharge.
When he returned to the US, he turned to drinking to forget his problems. His wife enlisted the help of his cousin, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who ordered the FBI to track him down, and he was brought back to his family. To extricate him from his current situation, the President gave him a commission as a major in the United States Army, and had him transferred and posted to Fort Richardson, Alaska, where he worked as an intelligence officer and helped establish a territorial militia of Eskimos and Aleuts.
Read more about this topic: Kermit Roosevelt
Famous quotes containing the words service in, service, world and/or war:
“The man of large and conspicuous public service in civil life must be content without the Presidency. Still more, the availability of a popular man in a doubtful State will secure him the prize in a close contest against the first statesman of the country whose State is safe.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.”
—Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke Wellington (1769–1852)
“Oh, men are jailers all; jailers of themselves; and in Opinion’s world ignorantly hold their noblest part a captive to their vilest.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)