Root, George Welles

Born November 2 1, 1896, in Hartford, Connecticut. Son of Erastus S. and Lillian Dermont Root. Home, Hartford, Connecticut. Educated Hartford High School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Class of 1919. Joined American Field Service, June 25, 1917 ; attached Transport Section 526 to November 19, 1917. Returned to America. Enlisted as Private, U. S. Heavy Tank Corps. Promoted to Sergeant. Sailed for England, August, 1918. Died of diphtheria and pneumonia, December 25, 1918, at American Base Hospital, Salisbury Court, England. Buried Magdalen Hill Cemetery, Winchester, England.

WHEN the United States entered the war, George Welles Root was too young to be drafted, but his desire to serve was not to be balked so easily, and in June, 1917, he volunteered for the American Field Service. A youth of twenty, he went to France as a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Unit, and, shortly after his arrival on the other side, was detailed to one of the camion sections serving the French army on the Chemin des Dames front. Here he labored for six months --six months of hard, uninspiring, routine work --- but the sort of work that was essential to the ultimate victory.

At the expiration of his enlistment he returned to the United States where, in the spring of 1918, he enlisted as a private in the Heavy Tank Corps of the National Army. He was promptly made a sergeant, and sailed overseas with his battalion in August. Soon after landing in England he was stricken with influenza, complicated by pneumonia, and followed by diphtheria. He died, in service, on Christmas day, 1918, at American Base Hospital 40, Salisbury Court, England, and was buried in Magdalen Hill Cemetery, Winchester, England.

Sergeant Root was a lineal descendant of Chief Justice Jesse Root who was for many years at the head of the Connecticut Bar and who served several years in the Continental Congress. He was a graduate of Hartford High School and a member of the Class of 1919 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was active in college affairs and a universal favorite. As early as his freshman year he was a member of the general staff of the Technology Monthly, and played on the freshman football team.

Something of Sergeant Root's character was clearly evidenced by his actions in his last year of High School when his mother became critically ill. His tender care and supreme devotion to her, giving as he did, practically all his time outside of school to cheer and assist her, proved him to be a most lovable, thoughtful, and dependable son. Obviously such unselfishness was of the kind which would lead him to champion, as he unhesitatingly did, the cause of democracy and to fight for the ideals in which he so earnestly believed.

"Your devotion to the highest ideals," wrote the late President Maclaurin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "and the spirit that has moved you and the other Tech men now 'somewhere in France' to give yourselves unreservedly to the cause of your country and humanity, make us feel proud and thankful. May you, and the other Tech 'boys,' be cheered by the thought of our confidence in your valor, and by our appreciation of the stimulating effect of your self-sacrifice on those that are still here, and may this Christmas, under such unusual conditions, crowded as it must be with memories of home and of those you left behind with anxious solicitude for your well-being, bring a special blessing to us all."

Just one year later to a day, early on Christmas morning at Salisbury Court, England, Sergeant George Welles Root, having been at the front in France, having returned to America for training, and now being again on his way to the fighting lines, received the ultimate reward of his services, as his spirit slipped triumphantly away to claim its place in the ranks of that immortal host --- the heroes of the World War.

• Tribute from Memorial Volume of the American Field Service, 1921