Patton wrote in his diary that Roosevelt was one of the bravest men he had ever known. Years later Omar Bradley was asked to name the single most heroic thing he witnessed in all of World War II. He didn't pause. He said, "Ted Roosevelt on Utah Beach."

X.com ^ | July 12, 2026 | Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2

[ransomnote]

Roger Stone reposted

Voices of WW2

@VoicesofWW2

·
Jul 12

On this day in 1944, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. died in his sleep in a stone farmhouse in Normandy. He was 56 years old, and he had spent almost his entire adult life trying to be worthy of a famous last name.

He was the eldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt. In the First World War he went to France and was gassed and badly wounded at Soissons leading his men. That same summer his younger brother Quentin, a pilot, was shot down and killed over France. Ted came home with lungs and a leg that never fully recovered, and before he even left Europe he helped found the American Legion so that ordinary soldiers would have someone looking out for them.

Between the wars he did almost everything. Governor of Puerto Rico. Governor General of the Philippines. Businessman, explorer, writer. He could have spent the Second World War safe behind a desk. Instead, at 54, arthritic and walking with a cane, he talked his way back into uniform and into combat.

By 1943 he was fighting in North Africa and Sicily under Terry Allen, and their loose, unpolished, soldier-first style rubbed General Patton the wrong way. Patton had them both relieved of command. Roosevelt didn't sulk. He asked for another job, any job, as long as it kept him near the fighting. They made him assistant commander of the 4th Infantry Division.

Then came D-Day. He hid a heart condition from the Army doctors. He wrote to his commander three separate times, in writing, begging to go in with the very first wave rather than watch from a ship. He was the only general to land in the first wave on any beach that morning, the oldest man in the invasion, walking through machine gun fire with a cane in one hand and a pistol in the other.

The boats came in a mile off course. Officers froze. Roosevelt limped up and down the beach under fire, studied the ground, and said, "We'll start the war from right here." Then he spent the morning waving men forward and sorting out the chaos so calmly that terrified 20 year olds looked at this old man with a cane and decided that if he wasn't scared, they wouldn't be either.

His son Quentin, named for the uncle killed in the last war, landed at Omaha Beach the same morning. They were the only father and son to come ashore together on D-Day.

He died a month later. A heart attack in his sleep. And here is the part that gets me. On the very day he died, the orders had just come through promoting him to major general and giving him his own division. He never saw the paperwork. He never knew he'd earned the Medal of Honor either.

At his funeral his pallbearers were seven of the most famous generals of the war, Bradley, Hodges, Collins, Barton, Huebner, and George Patton. The same Patton who had fired him. Patton wrote in his diary that Roosevelt was one of the bravest men he had ever known.

Years later Omar Bradley was asked to name the single most heroic thing he witnessed in all of World War II. He didn't pause. He said, "Ted Roosevelt on Utah Beach."

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks! I started to konk out, so I went to bed, and while selecting my way through the Roku to get to the search box in the YT app I actually did konk out. I got about 30 minutes in, and plan to watch the rest later today.

[Sequoyah101]

It happens.

[Antoninus]

Amazing story. Thanks for posting it.

Reminded me of a speculative fiction short-story where Quentin Roosevelt was president in the 1940as instead of Franklin, and Blessed Karl of Austria helped broker a peace to end the Great War before his empire crumbled.

The Resplendent Dawn of a Serene Future

[weezel]

I read that Strom thurmond was 45 years old and a successful attorney who dropped his practice and joined right after Pearl Harbor.

[rlmorel]

A remarkable performance by Cagney! Did you like it?

One of the things I enjoyed most was the opening choir of sailors at his Retirement Ceremony at the beginning of the movie. I captured that as an MP3 file...

[SunkenCiv]

I've been so lazy today I haven't even reached for the Roku remote. The house is very quiet, just a fan running. Supposed to hit 94 today, phone sez it will feel like 96. I should just open the movie in a tab here, because then no ad breaks.

[SunkenCiv]

“The Gallant Hours” (1960)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oiU4i63LLA

[SunkenCiv]

I just got the vax scene, 😆.

[packrat35]

Heard the same thing about a lot of submarine officers getting replaced also. The older ones were too cautious and they wanted go getters.

[Hebrews 11:6]

Once again, as I do daily, just now I prayed for your salvation. I don’t consider it mere coincidence that you replied to me here—it was a Divine appointment.

[rlmorel]

I cannot express how grateful I am. That means something to me. Thank you.

I have a lot of people helping me, and you are one of them.

[Hebrews 11:6]

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

The praying will continue until salvation comes.

[Hebrews 11:6]

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

The praying will continue until salvation comes.

[rlmorel]

"...Heard the same thing about a lot of submarine officers getting replaced also. The older ones were too cautious and they wanted go getters..."

Absolutely, that is a great case in point.

And that is not a knock on those older men because there is a reason war is primarily fought by young men. It takes stamina and resilience. Now that I am an older guy, I understand that better.

One of my favorite passages of script from one of my favorite movies (The Caine Mutiny) illustrates it well. The crew is celebrating their victory in court in which the charges of mutiny agains them were dropped because CDR. Queeg famously went to pieces in courtroom with his marbles in hand, and their defense attorney, LT Greenwald, drunk, walks into their victory party uninvited:

---

LT GREENWALD: Well, well, well. The officers of the Caine in happy celebration.

LT MARYK: You're kind of tight.

LT GREENWALD: I've got a guilty conscience. m I thought the wrong man was on | trial, so I torpedoed Queeg for you. I had to torpedo him. And I feel sick about it.

LT MARYK: Take it easy.

LT GREENWALD: When I was studying law, and Mr Keefer was writing his stories, and Willie was tearing up the playing fields of Princeton...who was standing guard | over this country of ours? Not us. We knew you couldn't make any money in the service. Who did the dirty work for us? | Queeg did, and a lot of other guys. Tough guys who didn't crack up like Queeg.

ENS KEITH: But no matter what, Queeg endangered the ship and the lives of the men. He didn't endanger any lives. You did. A fine bunch of officers.

LT MARYK: You said yourself he cracked.

LT GREENWALD: That's a very pretty point. I left out one detail in court...it wouldn't have helped our case. At one point, Queeg came to you for help, and you turned him down.

LT MARYK: Yes, we did.

LT GREENWALD: He wasn't worthy of your loyalty. So you turned on him. You made up songs about him. If you'd been loyal to Queeg, do you think all this would have come up? I'm asking you, Steve. Would it have been necessary to take over?

LT MARYK: It probably | wouldn't have been necessary. If that's true, we were guilty.

LT GREENWALD: You're learning. You don't work with the captain because of his hairstyle but because he's got the job, or you're no good. The case is over. You're all safe. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

---

Anyone who has served in the military in general understands this dynamic. Anyone who is honest understands it well. No matter how mean or undesirable any Commanding Officer might be, you are bound to follow orders that are not immoral or wholly irrational. You do as they say. And if you refuse to follow orders, you better be prepared to fully back it up and take the consequences in an inquiry or court martial.

And the military looks out for its own, its image, and its reputation. They won't be in the least sympathetic unless your rationale for disobeying is airtight, and even then, you are more likely to suffer a severe fate than not.

In the end, that amazing novel and movie were not about a mutiny. They were about leadership.

In this example, as LT Greenwald said, while Keith was playing football at Princeton and Keefer was writing his novels in the months and years leading up to Pearl Harbor, Queeg was on a destroyer in the North Atlantic at real, undeclared war with Nazi subs, who were absolutely out to kill him. By the time he was assigned to the Caine, he was tired, and he finally cracked under the pressure as a lot of good and decent men do in war.

Even young men.

[NorthMountain]

the Major General took off his stars, pinned his eagle back on, and went to war.

That right there is a leader worth following.

[packrat35]

When I was younger, I didn’t like that movie, but I rewatched a few years ago and it really hit home. Yeah, you are supposed to not like the Capt from the start, but the ending really made the whole thing make sense.

[dfwgator]

The book reveals a lot the movie didn’t.

Keefer, went on to command a ship and froze just like Queeg did.

Basically, when Keefer was ‘diagnosing’ Queeg, he was really diagnosing himself. He always chickened out.

[SunkenCiv]

Yup, e.g. the US sub fleet was small, and the new commander of the fleet got the job in large part because he wanted to start right away attacking the Japanese freighters, to start starving their armed forces of needed supplies, rather than try to take on their naval vessels which were fast and loaded with depth charges.

The US figure for sunk tonnage was something like 8 million tons (thanks to the need for verification), while the Japanese figure was actually 11 million tons. It wasn’t all due to our silent service, but a lot was. Parshall said the overall campaign against their shipping was so effective that by 1944 it got difficult to find stuff to sink.

[SunkenCiv]

‘Bull’ Halsey’s son:

LCDR William Frederick Halsey III
Birth 8 Sep 1915
Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, USA
Death 23 Sep 2003 (aged 88)
La Jolla Amago, San Diego County, California, USA
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/233078757/william-frederick-halsey

Brett Halsey
Brett Halsey (born Charles Oliver Hand; June 20, 1933) is an American former film actor, sometimes credited as Montgomery Ford... Halsey is a great-nephew of the United States Navy Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., also known as Bull Halsey, commander of the Pacific Allied naval forces during World War II. Universal Pictures selected Brett Halsey’s acting name from the admiral.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Halsey#Personal_life

[SunkenCiv]

I finished watching today. We probably all know that Hollywood doesn’t make documentaries, but I didn’t even mind that the shootdown of Yamamoto was wrenched out of its actual time for the purpose of drama in the movie.