On reaching Paris, he was notified to report at American Army headquarters to receive his commission in the United States Army. Having received it, at his own request, he was assigned as a detached volunteer American officer to go into battle at once with his old French escadrille.
On the following day, in closing his last letter to his parents, he wrote, in a single short sentence, his creed as an American Soldier, and, all unknowingly his own epitaph, now carved in stone upon his grave in the cemetery at Versailles, the heart of France:
It is an investment, not a loss,
when a man dies for his country.
Flying in his Spad to Montdidier, Death met him near Villacoublay.
In his poem, To Whom the Wreath, an appeal for the fatherless children of France, he wrote:
Give us to help beat back the Hun,
But give the French the honor won;
Pray God, we’ll know when Death is done,
That France is safe and Children’s Homes.