Alvin Roth's enlistment and service in the Canadian Army

Alvin Roth's enlistment and service in the Canadian Army are defined by a choice made without his family's consent, followed by the bodily cost of combat and a hard-won rehabilitation. His return did not simply close the episode: discharged with an artificial limb, a disability pension, and the option of remaining in Canada, he faced a new question of where he belonged.

Departure and Family Opposition

Alvin went to Canada without telling his family and left on a Friday night. Bess Roth recalled how terrible his departure had been, insisting that no one in the family wanted him to go to war and that he had made the decision on his own. Her account came amid an argument about Herman Roth's support for Franklin D. Roosevelt: Sandy Roth accused his father of wanting the whole country to enter the war, while Bess tried to distinguish Herman's politics from Alvin's unilateral decision to enlist. The disagreement exposed how the war had entered the household not as an abstraction but as a conflict over who could choose to risk a life.

Combat and Injury

Alvin later described a night in the fighting when a wounded man remained alive and screaming. Near dawn, with a boat due to arrive, Alvin crawled roughly fifty yards to him, found him dead, and shot him twice in the head. A grenade exploded in that moment and injured both of Alvin's legs. One foot had been twisted around; surgeons operated, set the leg in a cast, and straightened it. His left leg, however, was already nearly amputated. Alvin's account replaces the heroic picture Philip Roth had once imagined with the harsh particulars of exhaustion, violence, and irreversible injury. Monty Roth suggested that, in the half-light and confusion of no man's land, Alvin might have been hit by one of his own men; the possibility remains a conjecture, not an established explanation.

Rehabilitation and Return

Alvin was discharged in January 1942 after a long period of hospital rehabilitation. He first gave up the wheelchair, then the crutches, and Canadian Army nurses trained him to walk unaided on his artificial limb. The sequence marks recovery as demanding practical work, not a sudden restoration: mobility returned, but only with a prosthesis and after sustained training.

His discharge also brought material consequences. The Canadian government was to pay him a monthly disability pension of $125, a little more than half of what Herman earned each month from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, along with $300 in separation pay. As a handicapped veteran, Alvin could qualify for additional benefits if he stayed in Canada; foreign volunteers in its armed forces could also receive citizenship immediately upon discharge if they wished. Monty Roth pressed the implication with a taunt, asking why Alvin did not become a Canadian and remain there, since he supposedly could not stand America. The question turned Alvin's service and injury into a dispute about allegiance and home, even as the choice of whether to stay remained his.