The Colonel said further that Kermit, with the Anglo-Indian forces in Mesopotamia, as the leader of “a troop of Whirling Dervishes,” Indian cavalry, had also been in action.
Later the Colonel’s pride in his family’s war record was to extend to include the women of his family. Mrs. Roosevelt, in the heart-breaking trials she passed through, had proven herself a true heroine. Her daughters and daughters-in-law proved in many ways their devotion to their country’s cause. Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., did especially effective work.
She was the first American woman sent abroad for war service by the Y. M. C. A. She arrived in Paris a few weeks after Pershing. There she conducted a French class for Americans, with ambulance drivers for pupils. Then she worked in the first canteen in Paris, and was in charge of all the women’s work in establishing the first American officers’ hotel.
When she had been in Paris six months the army created “leave areas” for the American soldiers. These areas were put under the control of the Y. M. C. A., whose officials gave Mrs. Roosevelt charge of the women’s part of the work.
Requiem
“Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson.