Palfrey, who was dean of Columbia College and a member of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Military service in World War I From 1914 to 1916, Roosevelt was assistant manager for National City Bank in Buenos Aires. In 1917, as he was about to be transferred to a Russian branch, the U.S. entered the World War. He attended the Plattsburg School for officers from May to July 1917 but resigned from the U.S. Army to join the British Army. On August 22, 1917, Roosevelt was appointed an honorary captain in the British Army. He saw hard fighting in the Near East, later transferring to the United States Army. While his other brothers had had summer training at Plattsburgh, New York, Roosevelt had missed out on this training. Roosevelt joined the British Army to fight in the Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) theater of World War I. He was attached to the 14th Light Armoured Motor Battery of the Machine Gun Corps, but the British High Command decided they could not risk his life and so they made him an officer in charge of transport (Ford Model T cars). Within months of being posted to Mesopotamia, he mastered spoken as well as written Arabic and was often relied upon as a translator with the locals. He was awarded a Military Cross on August 26, 1918. Roosevelt relinquished his British commission on April 28, 1918, and was transferred to the AEF in France. In 1918, he learned that his youngest brother Quentin, a pilot, had been shot down over France and had been buried by the Germans with full military honors. He was commissioned a captain in the United States Army on May 12, 1918, and commanded Battery C, 7th Artillery of the 1st Division. He participated in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive near the end of the war. He returned to the United States on March 25, 1919, and was discharged from the Army two days later. Between the wars After the war, Roosevelt went into business; he founded the Roosevelt Steamship Company and the United States Lines. He continued to enjoy outdoor activities with his brothers. In 1919, he joined the Empire State Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, to which both his father and elder brother belonged. In 1925, Roosevelt accompanied his brother Ted on a hunting expedition across the Himalayas, over uncharted mountain passes rising from the Vale of