Crowded Hours of Glorious Life: March to July 1918

Abstract

In Flanders and France, the Allied and American forces were only too aware that a great blow was about to be delivered by an enemy greatly strengthened by troops freed from the Russian front; the only question was where the German onslaught would fall. Before this occurred, however, on March 12 Archie became the first of TR’s sons to be bloodied in the war when he had his left arm broken and left knee seriously injured by shrapnel bursts as he led his platoon on a raid of the German trenches. For this action, in which he gave several commands and stayed on his feet for some time until being knocked down by the second wound, Archie received a Croix de Guerre from a French general while he was on the operating table.¹