Tutein, Chester Robinson

Born May 17, 1895, in Revere, Massachusetts. Son of E. Arthur and Edith Robinson Tutein. Educated Winchester High School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Class of 1918. Joined American Field Service, June 20, 1917; attached Transport Section 526 until November 19, 1917. Enlisted U.S. Aviation as cadet, January 5, 1918. Trained Tours, St. Maixent, Issoudun, and St. Jean des Monts. Commissioned Second Lieutenant, May 18, 1918; attached 185th Aero, Squadron, November 11, 1918. Killed in aeroplane accident, November 17, 1918. Buried at Souilly, Meuse.

IF ever man was asked to serve his country by waiting,---irritating, eternal waiting while he longed to be striving at the front,--- such a one was Chester Robinson Tutein. In the autumn of 1917 after three months with a camion section of the Field Service he decided to enter aviation, but, urged by the commander of the Reserve Mallet, he remained, with others who wished to leave, until their places were filled in November. Immediately Chester applied, but it was January before he was allowed to enlist as a private in the air service. Meantime he did whatever work they could give him at the aviation headquarters in Paris. Then for five months after his enlistment he waited for assignment as a cadet to an instruction center, doing "kitchen police" duty in camp. Training lasted from June until November and not until Armistice Day was he assigned to his pursuit squadron. Less than a week later he was killed in an accident. Yet as truly as if it had occurred in combat Chester died in his country's cause.

"Chet" had many friends at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he left in his junior year for France and drove a truck in Section 526 through the summer, near Soissons. After this began his weary struggle to reach the front as a pilot. With good reason one of his classmates speaks of "the fine spirit he showed in going after his commission in the face of so much hard luck" and of his "pluck in sticking to it."

Chester sometimes wrote bitterly of his imagined shortcomings and laziness, but through it all, as Lieutenant Gilbert, a fellow aviator, wrote, he had "pep all the time to cheer one on," and his commanding officer mentions especially that "he was always willing and cheerful about his work." His spontaneous humor made many a dull hour endurable for his comrades while for himself he said, " I have been a full-fledged army cook for two weeks and it has given me something to live for."

"Chet" joked about his weariness, his work, his play, and about death. Late in October he wrote: "I will either be an ace in a month or pushing up daisies." He could be serious, too, for when a pilot and his observer crashed, he said: "Thank the Lord I have nobody riding with me . . . . . I do not wish to have my mistakes result in any other body's suffering." His writing was full of lively touches and, loving flying, he often caught with vigorous simplicity the feeling of it, as when he said, "The horizon seems to curve up and form a deep saucer with you flying over the center of it."

The front was reached too late for Chester to do battle. Others thought immediately of getting home, but he anticipated months of policing the Rhine, for him homecoming also must wait. He was impatient only at the idleness. "Much more of this life," he wrote, disgusted, "will be about my finish," and next day while flying he seemed to lose control, spun straight to the ground, and was killed. "He went up in a Sopwith Camel . . . . . . played low and stunted close to the ground in a most wonderful exhibition of flying . . . . . Returning, something went wrong and he fell."

It seems a cruel, unreasonable end for such patient service, but in the steadfastness of spirit which kept "Chet" at his tasks however aimless and petty in seeming, is a real heroism finer than much loudly acclaimed in the war. The father of one of his chums, writing to Chester's father, voiced the faith that had been "Chet's" and which his whole life justified. "It is not Taps with which we lay them to rest, but the glorious notes of a divine Reveille for those who wake to see the Sun, for those who face the Morning."

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