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Contact Info
Home Town Dayton, Ohio
Last Address Washington, DC
Date of Passing Oct 23, 1927
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
Joseph Theodore Dickman was born on October 6, 1857, in Dayton, Ohio. He was commissioned in the 3rd Cavalry upon graduation from West Point in 1881. He served in the Geronimo campaign and on the Mexican border patrol in operations against the Garza revolutionists and in the capture of the outlaws, Benavides and Gonzales.
While at Fort Riley, Kansas (1893-94) as an instructor at the Cavalry and Light Artillery School, his command was on duty in the Chicago railroad strike in 1894 before he was transferred to Fort Ethan Allen, Vermont.
During the Spanish-American War, Captain Dickman served in the Santiago campaign on the staff of General Joseph Wheeler.
He saw action against insurgents during the Philippine Insurrection in the Island of Panay in 1899-1900 and was promoted to major and lieutenant colonel in a volunteer infantry regiment.
He served as Chief of Staff to General Adna R. Chaffee during the Peking Relief Expedition which followed the Boxer Uprising in China in 1900. While there he saw action in the engagement at Pa-ta-Chao temples, near Peking, on Sept. 26, 1900.
In 1902 he was named to the first General Staff. He graduated from the Army War College in 1905.
He was promoted to Major in March 1906, Lieutenant Colonel in February 1912, and Colonel in December 1914. In May 1917 he was promoted to Brigadier General and in August he became a temporary Major General in command of the 85th Infantry Division, Camp Custer, Michigan.
In November 1917 he commanded the 3rd Infantry Division and took them to France in March 1918. The 3rd Infantry Division saw combat at Chateau-Thierry on May 31 and held the Marne crossings against tremendous offensives while French lines on either side fell back. For this, the 3rd became known as the "Rock of the Marne."
In August 1918 he took over the IV Corps, participating in the St. Mihiel offensive. In October he commanded the I Corps during the Meuse-Argonne offensive.
In November he became the first commander of the Third Army, formed by General Pershing to hold the Coblenz bridgehead and to serve after the war as the Army of Occupation.
After the war, Major General Dickman turned over command of the Third Army to Lieutenant General Hunter Liggett and, as president of a board, prepared and submitted a lessons learned report before returning to the United States to take command of the Southern Department and the VIII Corps Area.
Major General Dickman retired October 6, 1921, but was recalled in 1922 to serve as president of the board charged with the removal of officers from active duty in conjunction with legislation enacted to downsize the force.
Major General Dickman died in Washington, D.C., October 23, 1927, at age 70. He was well-regarded as one of the ablest of officers of the World War, a military scholar, and a natural leader of men.
He was a member of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, the Society of Indian Wars, the Society of Santiago de Cuba and the Military Order of the World War.
Included among his awards and decorations are: the Distinguished Service Medal; Croix de Guerre, France; Order of Leopold, Belgium; Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy; Commander of the Legion of Honor, France; Knight of the Bath, England; and La Solidaridad, Panama. The honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by the University of Vermont.
Description The United States of America declared war on the German Empire on April 6, 1917. The U.S. was an independent power and did not officially join the Allies. It closely cooperated with them militarily but acted alone in diplomacy. The U.S. made its major contributions in terms of supplies, raw material and money, starting in 1917. American soldiers under General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), arrived in large numbers on the Western Front in the summer of 1918. They played a major role until victory was achieved on November 11, 1918. Before entering the war, the U.S had remained neutral, though it had been an important supplier to Great Britain and the other Allied powers. During the war, the U.S mobilized over 4 million military personnel and suffered 110,000 deaths, including 43,000 due to the influenza pandemic. The war saw a dramatic expansion of the United States government in an effort to harness the war effort and a significant increase in the size of the U.S. military. After a slow start in mobilising the economy and labour force, by spring 1918 the nation was poised to play a role in the conflict. Under the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson, the war represented the climax of the Progressive Era as it sought to bring reform and democracy to the world,[citation needed] although there was substantial public opposition to United States entry into the war.
Although the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, it did not initially declare war on the other Central Powers, a state of affairs that Woodrow Wilson described as an "embarrassing obstacle" in his State of the Union speech.[26] Congress declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire on December 17, 1917, but never made declarations of war against the other Central Powers, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire or the various Co-belligerents allied with the central powers, thus the United States remained uninvolved in the military campaigns in central, eastern and southern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific.
The United States as late as 1917 maintained only a small army, smaller than thirteen of the nations and empires already active in the war. After the passage of the Selective Service Act in 1917, it drafted 2.8 million men into military service. By the summer of 1918 about a million U.S. soldiers had arrived in France, about half of whom eventually saw front-line service; by the Armistice of November 11 approximately 10,000 fresh soldiers were arriving in France daily. In 1917 Congress gave U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans when they were drafted to participate in World War I, as part of the Jones Act. In the end Germany miscalculated the United States' influence on the outcome of the conflict, believing it would be many more months before U.S. troops would arrive and overestimating the effectiveness of U-boats in slowing the American buildup.
The United States Navy sent a battleship group to Scapa Flow to join with the British Grand Fleet, destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland and submarines to help guard convoys. Several regiments of Marines were also dispatched to France. The British and French wanted U.S. units used to reinforce their troops already on the battle lines and not to waste scarce shipping on bringing over supplies. The U.S. rejected the first proposition and accepted the second. General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) commander, refused to break up U.S. units to serve as mere reinforcements for British Empire and French units. As an exception, he did allow African-American combat regiments to fight in French divisions. The Harlem Hellfighters fought as part of the French 16th Division, earning a unit Croix de Guerre for their actions at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Séchault.
Impact of US forces on the war
On the battlefields of France in spring 1918, the war-weary Allied armies enthusiastically welcomed the fresh American troops. They arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day, at a time when the Germans were unable to replace their losses. After British Empire, French and Portuguese forces had defeated and turned back the powerful final German offensive (Spring Offensive of March to July, 1918), the Americans played a role in the Allied final offensive (Hundred Days Offensive of August to November). However, many American commanders used the same flawed tactics which the British, French, Germans and others had abandoned early in the war, and so many American offensives were not particularly effective. Pershing continued to commit troops to these full- frontal attacks, resulting in high casualties against experienced veteran German and Austrian-Hungarian units. Nevertheless, the infusion of new and fresh U.S. troops greatly strengthened the Allies' strategic position and boosted morale. The Allies achieved victory over Germany on November 11, 1918 after German morale had collapsed both at home and on the battlefield.