That moment when your propaganda stunt backfires.

During WW1, after (Quentin Roosevelt’s death), the Germans government distributed photos of his crashed plane (and corpse) as a propaganda victory. Reportedly this stunt ended up backfiring, as the German public was more so shocked that the son of a US President would willingly participate in the war, even at risk of death. [Source](https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/grave-quentin-roosevelt). Despite the propaganda circulation, QR was buried by the Germans with military honors, and was reinterred at Normandy after WW2.

“Roosevelt fretted over [the news](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/3sVKa42TMt) that Quentin may have perished, listening and watching for the message that would rekindle his sputtering hopes or snuff them out. Finally, the candle died. As he wrote to Kermit, the son to whom he was closest:

On Tuesday the first rumors of Quentin’s death came; the final and definite announcement that he was killed and not captured came yes-terday, Saturday, afternoon. Ethel and Alice had come on; and poor, darling heartbroken Flora had been spending the night here. There is not much to say. No man could have died in finer or more gallant fashion; and our pride equals our sorrow-each is limited only by the other. It is dreadful that the young should die; I need hardly say to you, who know so intimately how I feel, that in hospital last winter my one constant thought was how I wished that by dying it were possible for me to save any one of you from death; but after all how infinitely better death is than life purchased on unworthy terms; and you four, and Dick, being what you are—and neither your mother nor I would for anything in the world have you other than you are—it was unthinkable that you should do anything, any of you, except exactly what you have done.

Again Roosevelt acknowledged that things were more trying for Edith. “It is hard for the women who weep-and hardest for those who weep but little-when word comes that henceforth they are to walk in the shadow.” But it was a comfort and a support to him that she was as strong as she was. “Mother has been as wonderful as she always is in a great crisis. She has the heroic soul. Yesterday morning she went for a couple of hours row with me out on the still, glassy water towards the sound; there was a little haze, and it all soothed her poor bruised and aching spirit. Then we took a swim; and as we swam she spoke of the velvet touch of the water and turning to me smiled and said: ‘there is left the wind on the heath, brother!'”

Roosevelt updated Kermit on Ted and Archie. Ted had recently been badly hit (Roosevelt had been wrong about his being on the side-lines); he was recovering, however, and Eleanor had gone to him. Archie’s wounds were crippling, at least temporarily; his father thought he would heal more quickly at home. But both, thankfully, were out of the line of fire for the moment. Kermit himself was the only one unaccounted for. “I do not know where you are or what you are doing,” his father wrote plaintively. Yet across the miles and across the generation separating them, Roosevelt felt a bond that transcended the tie of father to son, basic though that was. He felt the bond of battle. “I do not think I could bear to send you my sons to face deadly peril if I had not myself twenty years ago eagerly faced a far smaller but similar risk. We are brothers, you and I!””

Source: T.R., The Last Romantic, pages 800-801

Vietnam war was the point after which rich people stopped serving in military. After draft was abolished, there was not even a need to pretend. The only people that I can find in last 20 years are Beau Biden and Brooks Johnson.