John Joseph Pershing (September 13, 1860 – July 15, 1948)
✪ John Joseph Pershing, nicknamed “Black Jack,” was a senior United States Army officer and military strategist. He served most famously as the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on the Western Front during World War I from 1917 to 1918. In addition to leading the AEF to victory in World War I, Pershing also notably served as a mentor to most of the following generation of US generals who commanded the United States Army during World War II: including George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Lesley J. McNair, George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur.
Pershing was of French-Dutch ancestry & was born on a farm near Laclede, Missouri on September 13, 1860; the son of farmer and store owner John Fletcher Pershing and homemaker Ann Elizabeth Thompson. When the Civil War began, his father supported the Union and was a sutler for the 18th Missouri Volunteer Infantry. He died on March 16, 1906. Pershing’s mother died during his initial assignment in the American West.
Pershing attended a school in Laclede that was reserved for precocious students who were the children of prominent citizens. After completing high school in 1878, he taught local black children in a one room school house. While pursuing a teaching career, Pershing also studied at the State Normal School (now Truman State University) in Kirksville, Missouri. He graduated in 1880 with a Bachelor of Science degree in scientific didactics.
Two years later, he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy from Congressman Joseph Henry Burrows. He later admitted he applied to the Academy not because he had any interest in a military career; but because the education was free and of better quality than what he could obtain in rural Missouri.
Pershing was sworn in as a West Point cadet in the fall of 1882. He was selected early for leadership positions and became successively First Corporal, First Sergeant, First Lieutenant, and First Captain, the highest cadet rank possible. Pershing also commanded, ex officio, the honor guard that saluted the funeral train of President Ulysses S. Grant as it passed West Point in August 1885. Pershing graduated in the summer of 1886. He ranked 30th in his class of 77 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant.
Pershing reported for active duty on September 30, 1886, and was assigned to Troop L of the 6th U.S. Cavalry stationed at Fort Bayard, in the New Mexico Territory. While serving in the 6th Cavalry, Pershing participated in several Indian campaigns and was cited for bravery in actions fighting the Apache. Between 1887 and 1890, Pershing would serve with the 6th Cavalry at various different postings in New Mexico, Arizona, and South Dakota. He also became an expert marksman and won several army rifle and pistol shooting competitions.
In September of 1891, Pershing was assigned as the professor of military science and tactics at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, a position he held until 1895. While carrying out this assignment, Pershing attended the university’s College of Law, from which he received a Bachelor Of Laws degree in 1893.
On October 20, 1892, Pershing was promoted to first lieutenant and in 1895 took command of a troop of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, one of the original Buffalo Soldier regiments composed of African-American soldiers.
In 1897, Pershing was appointed to the West Point tactical staff as an instructor, where he was assigned to Cadet Company A. Because of his strictness and rigidity, Pershing was unpopular with the cadets, who took to calling him “Nigger Jack” because of his service with the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry. During the course of his tour at the Academy, this nickname eventually softened to “Black Jack,” although according to historians “the intent remained hostile.” This nickname stuck with Pershing for the rest of his life and became widely known to the public as early as 1917.
At the start of the Spanish–American War, First Lieutenant Pershing was the regimental quartermaster for the 10th Cavalry. He fought on Kettle and San Juan Hills in Cuba; and was cited for gallantry. In 1919, he was awarded the Silver Citation Star for these actions, and in 1932 the award was upgraded to the Silver Star. A commanding officer who served with Pershing commented on his remarkably calm demeanor under fire, saying he was “cool as a bowl of cracked ice.” Pershing also served with the 10th Cavalry during the siege and surrender of Santiago de Cuba.
When the Philippine–American War began, Pershing reported to Manila on August 17, 1899 and was assigned to the Department of Mindanao and Jolo, where he commanded efforts to suppress the Filipino Insurrection. On November 27, 1900, Pershing was appointed adjutant general of his department and served in this posting until March 1, 1901. He was cited for bravery for actions on the Cagayan River while attempting to destroy a Philippine stronghold at Macajambo.
In June 1903, Pershing was ordered to return to the United States. President Theodore Roosevelt, who was taken by Pershing’s abilities, petitioned the Army General Staff to promote Pershing to colonel. In October 1904, he began attendance at the Army War College and was then ordered to Washington, D.C. for “general duties unassigned.”
Since Roosevelt could not directly promote Pershing himself, he petitioned for the United States Congress to authorize a diplomatic posting and Pershing was stationed as military attaché in Tokyo after his January 1905 War College graduation. During the same year, Pershing married Helen Frances Warren, the daughter of powerful US Senator Francis E. Warren, a Wyoming Republican who served at different times as chairman of the Military Affairs and Appropriations Committees. This union with the daughter of a powerful politician who had also received the Medal of Honor during the American Civil War would continue to aid Pershing’s military career throughout the remainder of his life.
During this period, Pershing’s reputation for both stern discipline and effective leadership continued to grow; with one experienced old soldier under his command later saying Pershing was an absolute “S.O.B.” and that he hated Pershing’s guts. However “as a soldier, the ones then and the ones now couldn’t even polish his (Pershing’s) boots.”
On December 20, 1913, Pershing received orders to take command of the 8th Brigade at the Presidio in San Francisco. With tensions running high on the border between the United States and Mexico because of the Mexican Revolution, the brigade was deployed to Fort Bliss, Texas, on April 24, 1914 and arrived there on the 27th.
After a year of duty serving at Fort Bliss, Pershing decided to move his family there. The arrangements were almost complete; however, on the morning of August 27, 1915, he received a telegram informing him of a house fire at the Presidio where a lacquered floor had ignited accidentally. The flames spread rapidly and resulted in the smoke inhalation deaths of his wife and three young daughters: Mary Margaret, age 3; Anne Orr, age 7 and Helen, age 8. Only his 5-year-old son, Warren, survived the fire. Pancho Villa sent Pershing his personal condolences. After the funerals at Lakeview Cemetery in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Pershing returned to Fort Bliss with his son, Warren, and his sister, May, to resume his duties as commanding officer.
After Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico on March 9, 1915 (known as The Battle Of Columbus), Pershing led an expedition into Mexico to capture Villa and the remnants of his Division Of The North Revolutionary Army. This expedition was ill-equipped and hampered by a lack of supplies due to the breakdown of the Quartermaster Corps. Although there had been talk of war on the border for years, no steps had been taken to provide for the procurement or handling of any supplies for an expedition. Despite this and other hindrances such as a lack of aid from the former Mexican government and a refusal to allow Americans to transport troops and supplies over their railroads, Pershing organized and commanded the Mexican Punitive Expedition, a combined armed force of 10,000 men that penetrated 350 miles deep (560 km) into chaotic Mexican territory where they ultimately routed Villa’s revolutionaries, but failed to capture him.
At the start of the United States’ involvement in World War I President Woodrow Wilson considered mobilizing the US Army to join the fight. In May, Wilson briefly interviewed Pershing and then selected him for the command. He was officially appointed to the position on May 10, 1917, and held that post until the end of the war in 1918. On October 6, 1917, Pershing, then a major general, was promoted to full general in the National Army.
Pershing was responsible for the organization, training, and supply of a combined professional and draft Army and National Guard force which eventually grew from 27,000 inexperienced men into two field armies along with the formation of a third as the war ended, totaling over two million soldiers.
Pershing departed under top secrecy from Fort Jay at Governors Island in New York Harbor on May 28, 1917, aboard the RMS Baltic and arrived in France in June 1917. In a show of American presence, part of the 16th Infantry Regiment marched through Paris shortly after his arrival. Pausing at the tomb of Marquis de Lafayette, he was reputed to have uttered the famous line “Lafayette, we are here.”
In September 1917, the French government commissioned a portrait of Pershing by 23-year-old Romanian artist Micheline Resco. Their friendship would continue for the rest of his life; and in 1946, at 85, Pershing secretly married Resco in his Walter Reed Hospital apartment. She was 35 years his junior.
For the first time in American history, Pershing allowed American soldiers under the command of a foreign power. Under civilian control of the military, Pershing adhered to the racial policies of President Woodrow Wilson, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, and southern Democrats who promoted a “separate but equal” doctrine of military service. However, the “Buffalo Soldiers” units were not allowed to participate with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) during World War I. The American Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd and 93rd Infantry Divisions were the first American soldiers to fight in France in 1918, but did so under French command. Most regiments of the 92nd and all of the 93rd continued to fight under French command for the duration of the war.
Many American successes in World War One were largely credited to Pershing; and he became the most celebrated American leader of the war. However, MacArthur saw Pershing as a desk soldier and the relationship between the two men deteriorated by the end of the war.
Pershing controversially ordered his troops to continue fighting before the signed Armistice took effect because he doubted the Germans’ good faith. This resulted in 3,500 American casualties on the last day of the war; an act which was regarded as murder by a few officers under his command. Still, most of his contemporaries took the same view he expressed to the House Committee on Military Affairs in his testimony on November 5, 1919:
“When the subject of the armistice was under discussion we did not know what the purpose of it was definitely, whether it was something proposed by the German High Command to gain time or whether they were sincere in their desire to have an armistice; and the mere discussion of an armistice would not be sufficient grounds for any judicious commander to relax his military activities….No one could possibly know when the armistice was to be signed, or what hour be fixed for the cessation of hostilities so that the only thing for us to do, and which I did as commander in chief of the American forces, and which Marshal Foch did as commander in chief of the Allied armies was to continue the military activities….”
1918 was also a year of personal health struggles for Pershing as he was taken ill during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, but unlike many who were not so fortunate, he survived and rode his horse, Kidron, in the 1919 Paris victory parade.
In September 1919, in recognition of his distinguished service during World War I, the U.S. Congress authorized the President to promote Pershing to General of the Armies of the United States, the highest rank possible for any member of the United States armed forces. This rank was created specifically for him. Although Pershing was a Republican, many of his party’s leaders considered him too closely tied to the policies of the Democrat President Woodrow Wilson. Pershing laid the cornerstone of the World War Memorial in Indianapolis on July 4, 1927. On January 5, 1935 Pershing was designated a Military Order of the World Wars Honorary Commander-in-Chief for Life.
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During the 1930s, Pershing largely retreated to private life, but returned later to the public eye with the publication of his memoirs, My Experiences in the World War, for which he received the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for history. In 1940, before and after the Fall of France, Pershing was also an outspoken advocate of aid for the United Kingdom during World War II.
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Pershing died of coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure at the age of 87 on July 15, 1948 at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C., which was his home after 1944. He lay in state at the United States Capitol rotunda and following a full state funeral, he was interred at Arlington National Cemetery among the grave sites of the soldiers he commanded in Europe. The site is now known as Pershing Hill. ✪
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