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On the last day of March, 1943, there were eight of us scattered over this vast land of ours: one In Maine, another In California; one in Washington City, two in Virginia; one in Indiana, another in Florida; one in North Dakota. It was the year of our 60th anniversary, and we all wanted to go to our Alma Mater and sit at a table in Cullum Hall together; but owing to the difficulty and discomfort of travel in this parlous time of war, not one of us was planning to go.</p>
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When the 12th of June, our anniversary date, arrived we were only seven. On the first of April the cold hand of death had taken one of our scattered eight. How quickly the months pass after four score years! God grant that our little band of seven may all live to see another anniversary.</p>
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Our classmate, <em>Edwin Alvin Root</em>, retired colonel of infantry, died on the 1st of April, after thirty-nine years of service on the active list of the army, and twenty-one on the retired list. No other graduate of the Military Academy ever gave a life of service more faithful and devoted to our army and our country; few ever accomplished more of important, expert work; fewer ever received less reward for their work than this faithful, useful classmate of ours.</p>
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A brief account of his active career will not be out of place here—as brief as can be made of thirty-nine years of crowded achievement. For graduating at the top of his high-school in his native town of Kentland, Indiana, the youth was awarded a scholarship at Purdue University; but before time for him to avail himself of the scholarship, a competitive examination for appointment to the United States Military Academy was announced in his Congressional district. He entered the competition with twelve other boys, won the appointment, and joined the class of 1883 in June 1879. Four years afterwards, under the maple in front of the old Library, he received his graduation diploma from the hand of General Sherman, Commanding General of the Army (not Chief of Staff). The next day, June 13, 1883, he became a 2nd lieutenant, 22nd Infantry, and his first commission bears that date and the signature of President Arthur. After graduation leave he joined the regiment at Fort Lyon, Colorado.</p>
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It was to this frontier post that he brought his bride two years later. Born Florence Eddy, like himself a native of Indiana, as wife she shared with her soldier husband all the hardships, and the joys, of frontier army life; changed station with him thirty times in thirty-five years; lived constantly with him at many different stations in the States; crossed the Pacific Ocean with him six times; was with him at various stations in the Philippine Islands, in China, in Hawaii, in Puerto Rico. In a letter from Mrs. Root she tells the writer that they “were stationed all over the Island of Mindanao” and those were troublous times with hostile Moros. No finer, braver, nobler women breathe the breath of life than those wives of officers in the “Old Army,” that army twenty-five thousand strong, which rid our vast Western Plains of the danger and the fear of Indians, and at the same time guarded our thousands of leagues of land and ocean frontier, and won independence for the patriots of Cuba.</p>
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Probably one of the most lively and interesting duties that Colonel Root had as a 2nd Lieutenant was performed in Indian Territory. That forbidden land, which later was to become the rich State of Oklahoma, was to be thrown open to the whites for settlement. The day and hour and second for the gunshot to announce the opening was appointed. Thousands of eager, honest landseekers stood, each with a foot on the boundary line, like college footracers, tremblingly awaiting the signal for the great rush. But weeks before, other hundreds not honest but more eager, sneaked into the Territory to get ahead of the legitimate rushers. It was in guarding the boundary line against those rascals, rounding them up and ejecting them, that Lieutenant Root performed active and interesting duty.</p>
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At the time when Colonel Root was a 2nd lieutenant, professional culture in our infantry and cavalry was at a low stage. True, the lieutenants were mostly West Pointers and a few of the captains; but there were almost no graduates of the Military Academy or cf civilian colleges among the field officers. If there were schools for junior officers in some of the garrisons, the studies were not concerned with advanced military education. There were no service associations with their special periodical magazines. The only service journal was the monthly magazine issued by the Military Service Institute, long ago defunct. The only professional books seen in an officer’s quarters were the little drill books, blue backs for infantry and yellow for cavalry, incorrectly called “Tactics,” the Army Regulations and the few primers in the art of war brought by graduates from the Military Academy. Most of the officers subscribed for one of the two service news weeklies.</p>
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The great service school at Fort Leavenworth was just casting off its kindergarten swaddling clothes. Lieutenant Root was one of the first officers in the Army actually to apply for detail as a pupil at the ‘‘Infantry and Cavalry School” (first of the series of names the school has had). The course was two years; he graduated at the head of his class, and his name still appears in the Official Army Register as an “Honor Graduate of the Infantry and Cavalry School.” Two years after his graduation he was, by War Department order, detailed as an instructor at the School, and was assigned to the Department of Military Engineering. One of the most serious handicaps in his department was the lack of suitable textbooks; so Root set to work to write his book entitled “Military Topography and Sketching”. In collaboration with two other instructors he wrote another texbook entitled “Military Field Engineering.” These two books were used in the School at Fort Leavenworth and in the garrison officer’s schools in the Army for many years.</p>
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Colonel Root got his promotion to 1st lieutenant and assignment to the 10th Infantry, and later as captain to the 19th Infantry. With the latter regiment he sailed for the first of his three tours of duty in the Philippines, in March 1902. In the meantime, however, the Spanish-American War had taken place, and with the temporary rank of major he had served as Chief Engineer on the staffs of General Schwan and General Brooke in the Puerto Rican campaign. Afterwards he was given charge of the harbor works at San Juan; and to this day he is remembered by elderly folk of San Juan for his fine work on their harbor.</p>
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His first tour in the Philippines took him to the Island of Mindanao. There in command of his company, he took part in a campaign against a hostile band of Moros. Afterwards, thanks to his reputation as an engineer, he was put in charge of road construction, and made through tropic jungle and over rugged mountains the first military road across that great island. In two other tours in the Philippines, and as he rose to higher grades in the slow promotion of that day, Colonel Root served at various stations on two continents and on several islands under the Stars and Stripes, and commanded several of our largest garrisons.</p>
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For example: In 1912 he was lieutenant colonel of the 15th Infantry stationed in Manila; revolution broke out in China, and the 15th was ordered to Tientsin; its colonel was ill, so Root went to Tientsin in command of the regiment. He remained there three years. Returning to the United States he was commandant of Plattsburg Barracks, New York, and later of Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. In 1918 he was ordered to the Philippines to command Fort McKinley, and in 1920, as colonel of the 27th Infantry, he took that regiment to Hawaii and became commanding officer of Schofield Barracks.</p>
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It was as commandant of Plattsburg Barracks in 1918 that the tragedy of his life began—tragedy that culminated two years later. The writer of this obituary, of his own makes no criticism nor comment upon the act of any person quick or dead, high or low in authority; but he believes it would be unfair to the memory of this faithful officer not to tell, in an obituary of him, his own conviction of the tragedy of his life, conviction that he harbored to the end, more than two decades.</p>
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Everyone remembers the Citizens Army Training Camp of World War I, at Plattsburg Barracks, New York. Everyone remembers that General Leonard Wood, then commanding the Department of the East, got all the credit for the Plattsburg experiment. Everyone remembers that about that time ex-President Theodore Roosevelt went about the country making bitter speeches against President Wilson for his failure to prepare for war. Colonel Root was in command of his own regiment and the Citizens Training Camp at Plattsburg Barracks. One day General Wood brought his friend and sponsor, ex-President Roosevelt to the camp, and the ex-President proceeded to make one of his bitter speeches to the Citizen Soldiery. The speech, in the words of Colonel Root, made President Wilson “furious.” The President blamed Colonel Root for allowing the ex-President to make the speech. In the presence of his Department Commander, and in view of the prominence of the speaker, Colonel Root could do no other.</p>
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Colonel Root was told by a general officer of the War Department in a position to know, that his name was sent three times to President Wilson by the Department with its recommendation for his promotion to the grade of brigadier general, but each time it was bluepenciled by the President. Root was not even given the temporary rank of brigadier general in the National Army during the World War—that time when stars fell on the shoulders of our colonels, “thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa.”</p>
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Followed Colonel Root’s “banishment” to the Philippines and his enforced retirement at 62. In 1918, as colonel of the 10th Infantry, he was in command of Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, with 18,000 recruits training for the World War. It was a fine command, and fine progress was making with the new officers and men. The Colonel worked by day, studied, planned, worried by night to improve the discipline and instruction of his command. He was inspired and heartened by the expectation that soon he should be sent in command of his own fine regiment at least, of full strength and with complete equipment, across the sea to take its place in our front line. But that was not to be. Only another disappointment awaited him, another frustration. With the unexpected suddenness of lightning out of a clear blue sky, comes an order from the War Department sending his regiment across seas, but detaching him and sending him to Manila. This disappointment consummated the tragedy of his life.</p>
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Colonel Root lived twenty-three years thereafter and died with and of a broken heart.</p>
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The rest of Colonel Root’s frustrated career can be told in a few lines. He was a graduate of the War College and served two years on the General Staff. He was detailed on a number of important special missions, some of them confidential, by the War Department. He was a constant reader and student of history and scientific publications. He belonged to no clubs, took little part in civic affairs. He played neither golf nor bridge, nor indulged in any outdoor sport for pleasure or health.</p>
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The Roots were a congenial and devoted couple, and as soon as practicable after his enforced retirement, which they believed to be another item of “Presidential persecution,” Mrs. Root persuaded her husband to take her for a trip to Europe. She hoped it would bring him some relief from his broken spirit, lighten his weight of grievances. And it did. They spent the first year abroad motoring over practically the whole of Europe, including the island of Britain. In their travels they visited Palma, on the island of Mallorca, the largest of the Balearic Islands, and they were so intrigued by the mild, balmy climate and the quiet, peaceful atmosphere of the place, that they bought a home and settled there. They fitted their house with antique furniture and surrounded themselves with all sorts of curios and things of virtue, old and beautiful. Colonel Root had kept and increased his class-room knowledge of the French and Spanish languages, and found it very useful with the natives. He and Mrs. Root acquired a circle of American, English and native friends, and lived there quietly, peacefully, happily until they “were bombed out of their home” during the recent revolution in Spain.</p>
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That providential occurrence drove them back to their native shores to await the final call. Colonel Root was an Episcopalian, loved his church, and found in death the peace which had been snatched from him at the zenith of his active career. With a beautiful military funeral and the simple impressive ritual of the Episcopal Church, the escort of officers saluted and taps were sounded over his open grave, and a mass of flowers was laid on the sod above. His body lies in Indianapolis.</p>
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<em>—M. F. S.</em></p>
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