Roger Brooke VII: A Legacy of Military Medicine (1878–1940)

Roger Brooke VII, military physician and United States Army officer, was born on June 14, 1878, at Sandy Spring, Maryland. He was the son of Dr. Roger Brooke VI and Louisa (Thomas) Brooke. The Brookes were Quakers and lived on a family farm in Montgomery County, Maryland. After graduating from George School, a private Quaker school near Newton, Pennsylvania, Brooke entered medical school in the Baltimore Medical College of the University of Maryland and graduated in 1900. After attending the Army Medical Museum, he entered the Medical Corps of the United States Army on June 29, 1901, as a first lieutenant (assistant surgeon). After graduating from the U. S. Army Medical School in 1902, he reported for his first duty assignment in the Philippines.

Lt. Roger Brooke returned stateside to marry Grace Ward McConnor, who was a student nurse while he was at the University of Maryland, on September 27, 1905. The newlyweds moved to Brooke’s new duty station at Fort Bayard, New Mexico. Brooke was promoted to captain (assistant surgeon) of the Medical Corps of the Regular Army on June 29, 1906, and then promoted to major on January 28, 1910. In 1911 the couple moved to San Francisco, California, where Major Brooke was Chief of Medical Service at the Letterman General Hospital at the Presidio of San Francisco. The couple welcomed their son, Roger, in 1914.

Brooke became a specialist in infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis. Early in his army career, he became interested in internal medicine and was lauded as an expert in that field in the Medical Corps. His study of tuberculosis began with his early service in the arid Southwest at Fort Bayard. Major Brooke was promoted to lieutenant colonel on May 15, 1917, and colonel on April 11, 1918. During World War I he served as senior instructor and assistant commandant in charge of the educational training of medical officers and enlisted men of the medical department at the Medical Officers' Training Camp, Camp Greenleaf, Georgia (September 1917 until December 1918). There he directed the work of its special schools, and through his persistent effort was largely responsible for the successful training of 10,000 officers and 70,000 men. For this service he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for “exceptionally meritorious service in a duty of great responsibly in time of war in connection with military operations.” Brooke was presented the award on November 29, 1922, while serving on duty with the U. S. Veterans Bureau in Washington, D. C. He was also decorated with the Order of St. Sava (Serbia). In January 1920 Brooke was a general officer attached to the Office of the Surgeon General in Washington, D. C., where he was chief of the tuberculosis section, division of medicine.

Brooke’s later tours of duty included the division of medicine of the Veterans Bureau, as chief medical consultant; Gorgas Hospital, Canal Zone; and at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where he was chief of the medical service from 1928 to 1933 and served as commanding officer of the Station Hospital. On June 29, 1927, Brooke was promoted to colonel, Medical Corps, in the Regular Army.

Colonel Brooke returned to the U. S. Surgeon General’s Office to serve as chief of professional services in 1935. The same year, he initiated the overseas recruit depot at Fort Slocum, New York, and the first routine chest examination by x-ray in the military. He was even considered for the position of surgeon general of the army, as Brooke was respected as one of the top-ranking medical officers in the service. His next tour was at Letterman General Hospital, San Francisco. Brooke’s transfer from the East Coast to the West Coast allowed the opportunity to pass through the Panama Canal. He took command at San Francisco when he received his promotion to brigadier general on January 29, 1938. He was later transferred to assume military command at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, and also served the Medical Field Service School in April 1940; he remained on duty as commandant there until his death. Roger Brooke VII died of a heart attack at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D. C., on December 18, 1940. He was sixty-two. Brig. Gen. Roger Brooke’s funeral services were held on December 20, 1940, at Fort Myer Chapel, preceding his burial in Arlington National Cemetery. His widow, Grace Brooke, died the following April.

Roger Brooke was a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Medical Association, the American Society of Tropical Medicine, the National Tuberculosis Association, and the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States. He contributed several articles to Military Surgeon and other medical journals. Station Hospital, Fort Sam Houston, was replaced in 1938, and the new hospital was designated Brooke General Hospital on September 24, 1942, in recognition of the outstanding manner in which Roger Brooke identified himself with community interests while in command of the Station Hospital. In 1946 the unit was expanded to become Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC), which housed the Medical Field Service Center after it was relocated from Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. In 1969 a memorial plaque honoring Brooke’s service was erected in front of the headquarters building of Brooke Army Medical Center. The bronze plaque is in Brooke’s likeness and states: “Physician, Soldier, Commander.”