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Contact Info
Last Address Laclede
Date of Passing Jul 15, 1948
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
United States Army General. He is remembered worldwide for serving from 1917 to 1918 as the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front during World War I. Born in Laclede, Missouri, he was the son of a railroad switchman. At the age of 17, he taught in a rural school for African-American children to earn enough money to pay for his college education at Kirksville Normal School, which is now Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. In 1881, answering an advertisement for the United States Military Academy's entrance exam, he sat for the exam, earning an entry to West Point in 1882. Graduating 30th out of 70 students, he also was President of his class and Captain of Cadets. He received his commission in the Cavalry and was ordered to the Western frontier, fighting in the Apache campaign in New Mexico and Arizona under the command of General Nelson A. Miles and earning his first combat citation. During this time, he participated in the famous Massacre at Wounded Knee. From 1891 until 1895, he served as a Professor of Military Science at the University of Nebraska, while receiving a law degree. Later he returned to the United States Military Academy as a tactical officer. As part of the Spanish-American War, he was sent to the Philippines in 1898 where he earned a Silver Star. He organized the Insular Bureau, under which the affairs of the Philippine Islands and Puerto Rico are still administered. In 1899, as a Captain, he returned to the Philippines where he put down an uprising of the Moros and received the personal congratulations of Secretary of War Elihu Root. In 1904, he was assigned as Military Attaché of the American Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, during the Russo-Japanese War. The following year, he returned to the United States and married Helen Frances Warren, the daughter of United States Senator Francis E. Warren. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt promoted him over 862 other officers, which prompted a great deal of professional resentment. The promotion raised rumors of favoritism and political dealing, fueled by the fact that his father-in-law was chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Regardless of the rumors, he continued to serve with great distinction and returned to the Philippines again as Military Commander and remained there until 1913. In January of 1914, he returned to the United States where President Woodrow Wilson assigned him under General Frederick Funston; Wilson then ordered him to "pursue and disperse" Pancho Villa and his band of Mexican guerrillas. Leaving his family at the Presidio in San Francisco, California, he went to El Paso, Texas, to coordinate his campaign. Prior to beginning this campaign, he received word his wife and three daughters had died in a house fire. Only his 6-year-old son had survived because of the heroics of the family's maid. Due to this tragic personal loss, he left his duties, but only long enough to see to the burial of his family, then returned and pressed on with his assignment. Though he failed to capture Villa, he effectively stopped Villa's terrorism and earned himself a promotion to Major General. It was also during this campaign that he earned the nickname "Black Jack" by commanding, and advocating, the 10th Calvary, a distinguished regiment of Black troops, often called the "Buffalo Soldiers." Once he returned to Washington, D.C. in 1917, and due to the sudden death of General Funston, President Wilson, on the advice of his Military Attaché, Major Douglas McArthur, named him to command the American Expeditionary Forces being sent to France after America's declaration of war on Germany. The Army he was to command did not exist yet; his task was to create it. One of his first actions upon arriving in France was to pay respects at the tomb of the Marquis de Lafayette. As he laid a wreath on the French soldier's grave, his aide announced, "Lafayette, we are here!" This signified to the French people that America was ready to assist them as they had the young American Republic in 1776. He fought diligently to maintain the integrity of the American forces. He did not, and would not, concur with the plan to use American forces only as replacements for depleted French and British troops. He also refused to allow any American forces to fight separately; insisting that all American forces fight together as a unit. It was his American troops who defeated the Germans in the St. Mihiel Salient in September of 1918. In October, the Americans fought bravely against the Germans along the Hindenburg Line during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, and, on November 11, 1918, the Armistice was declared. Upon his return to the United States, he received a hero's welcome. Congress conferred upon him the "Thanks of Congress" and the special rank of "General of the Armies of the United States." With this rank, he was given the option of 5 stars, but declined the offer. He served as Army Chief of Staff from 1921 until his retirement in 1924. He went on to chair the American Battle Monuments Commission and write his two-volume memoirs, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize. Though he lived at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., he was called upon during World War II for advice and counsel by the Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. In 1948, upon his death, his funeral cortege was led by the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, a veteran "doughboy" from World War I. After the funeral service in the Memorial Amphitheater, one of only nine to ever be held there, his last requests were honored. He had asked that he be buried with the men he had led and fought beside. He was interred in a special plot which placed him in front of his doughboys. His last request was that his grave be marked with the same white government regulation tombstone that marked the graves of his men. He was the recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, and many foreign awards. Buried beside him is his grandson, 2nd Lieutenant Richard Warren Pershing, who was killed in action in Vietnam. Pershing County, Nevada is named after him.
Other Comments:
General of the Armies
John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing was a senior United States Army officer. He served most famously as the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on the Western Front in World War I, 1917–18.
Pershing is the only American to be promoted in his own lifetime to General of the Armies rank, the highest possible rank in the United States Army.
Allowed to select his own insignia, Pershing chose to use four gold stars to distinguish himself from those officers who held the rank of General, which was signified with four silver stars.After the creation of the five-star General of the Army rank during World War II, his rank of General of the Armies could unofficially be considered that of a six-star general, but he died before the proposed insignia could be considered and acted upon by Congress.
In addition to leading the A.E.F. to victory in World War I, Pershing notably served as a mentor to many in the generation of generals who led the United States Army during World War II, including George Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Lesley J. McNair, George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur.
Description Meuse-Argonne, 26 September - 11 November 1918. At the end of August Marshal Foch had submitted plane to the national commanders for a final offensive along the entire Western Front, with the objective of driving the enemy out of France before winter and ending the war in the spring of 1919. The basis for his optimism was the success of Allied attacks all along the front in August. Furthermore, he pointed out, the Allies already had active operations in progress between the Moselle and Meuse, the Oise and Aisne, and on the Somme and Lys Rivers. Foch acknowledged that the Germans could stave off immediate defeat by an orderly evacuation combined with destruction of materiel and communications. Therefore the overall aim of the fall offensive would be to prevent a step-by-step enemy retirement. As Foch anticipated, the Germans eventually contributed to the success of his strategy. Their High Command could not bring itself to sacrifice the huge stores collected behind the front lines, and so delayed the withdrawal of its armies.
Foch's great offensive, planned to begin in the last week of September, called for a gigantic pincers movement with the objective of capturing Aulnoye and Mézières, the two key junctions in the lateral rail system behind the German front. Lose of either of these junctions would hamper seriously the German withdrawal. Despite grumbling from the English that they lacked the necessary manpower, a chiefly British army was assigned the teak of driving toward Aulnoye. The A.E.F. was designated for the southern arm of the pincers, the thrust on Mézières. Simultaneously the Belgian-French-British army group in Flanders would drive toward Ghent, and the French armies in the Oise-Aisne region would exert pressure all along their front to lend support to the pincers attack.
Pershing decided to strike his heaviest blow in a zone about 20 miles wide between the Heights of the Meuse on the east and the western edge of the high, rough, and densely wooded Argonne Forest. This is difficult terrain, broken by a central north-south ridge that dominates the valleys of the Meuse and Aire Rivers. Three heavily fortified places-Montfaucon, Cunel, and Barricourt-as well as numerous strong points barred the way to penetration of the elaborate German defenses in depth that extended behind the entire front. This fortified system consisted of three main defense lines backed up by a fourth line less well-constructed. Pershing hoped to launch an attack with enough momentum to drive through these lines into the open area beyond, where his troops could then strike at the exposed German flanks and, in a coordinated drive with the French Fourth Army coming up on the left, could cut the Sedan- Mézières railroad.
The task of assembling troops in the concentration area between Verdun and the Argonne was complicated by the fact that many American unite were currently engaged in the St. Mihiel battle. Some 600,000 Americans had to be moved into the Argonne sector while 220,000 French moved out. Responsibility for solving this tricky logistical problem fell to Col. George C. Marshall, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3 (Operations), First Army. In the ten-day period after St. Mihiel the necessary troop movements were accomplished, but many untried divisions had to be placed in the vanguard of the attacking forces.
On the 20-mile Meuse-Argonne front where the main American attack w to be made, Pershing disposed three corps side by side, each with three divisions in line and one in corps reserve. In the center was the V Corps (from right to left the 79th, 37th, and 91st Divisions with the 32d in reserve), which would strike the decisive blow. On the right was the III Corps (from right to left the 33d, 80th, and 4th Divisions with the 3d in reserve), which would move up the west aide of the Meuse. On the left was the I Corps (from right to left the 35th, 28th, and 77th Divisions with the 92d in reserve), which would advance parallel to the French Fourth Army on its left. Eastward across the Meuse the American front extended in direct line some 60 miles; this sector was held by two French Corps (IV and II Colonial) and the American IV Corps in the St. Mihiel sector. Pershing had available to support his offensive nearly 4000 guns, two-thirds manned by American artillerymen; 190 light French tanks, mostly with American personnel; and some 820 aircraft, 600 of them flown by Americans.
The Meuse-Argonne Offensive falls into three phases. During the initial phase (26 September-3-October) the First Army advanced through most of the southern Meuse-Argonne region, captured enemy strong points, seized the first two German defense lines, and then stalled before the third line. Failure of tank support, a difficult supply situation, and the inexperience of American troops all contributed to checking its advance.
In the second phase (4-31 October) the First Army, after the inexperienced divisions had been replaced by veteran units, slowly ground its way through the third German line. The enemy was forced to throw in reserves, drawn from other parts of the front, thus aiding the Allied advances elsewhere. In the face of a stubborn defense, American gains were limited and casualties were severe, especially as a result of the newly devised enemy tactic of attacking frontline troops with airplanes. First Army air unite retaliated with bombing raids which broke up German preparations for counterattacks. By the end of October the enemy had been cleared from the Argonne and First Army troops were through the German main positions. Two notable incidents of this phase of the campaign were the fight of the "Lost Battalion" of the 77th Division (2-7 October), and the feat of Corp. (later Sgt.) Alvin C. York, who single-handedly killed 15 Germans and captured 132 on 8 October.
In mid-October the organization of the Second Army was completed, at Toul in the St. Mihiel sector, to provide means for better control of the lengthening American front and solutions of the diverse tactical problems that it presented. Pershing assumed command of the new army group thus formed.
Before the third and final phase (1-11 November) of the offensive got under way, many of the exhausted divisions of the First Army were replaced, roads were built or repaired, supply was improved, and most Allied units serving with the A.E.F. were withdrawn. On 1 November First Army units began the assault of the now strengthened German fourth line of defense. Penetration was rapid and spectacular. The V Corps in the center advanced about six miles the first day, compelling the German units west of the Meuse to withdraw hurriedly. On 4 November the III Corps forced a crossing of the Meuse and advanced northeast toward Montmédy. Elements of the V Corps occupied the heights opposite Sedan on 7 November, thus finally accomplishing the First Army's chief mission-denial of the Sedan- Mézières railroad to the Germans. Marshal Foch, at this juncture, shifted the First Army left boundary eastward so that the French Fourth Army might capture Sedan, which had fallen to the Prussians in 1870. American units were closing up along the Mouse and, east of the river, were advancing toward Montmédy, Briny, and Metz, when hostilities ended on 11 November.
General Pershing authorized the results of the Meuse-Argonne Campaign, the greatest battle in American history up to that time, in his Final Report: "Between September 26 and November 11, 22 American and 4 French divisions, on the front extending from southeast of Verdun to the Argonne Forest, had engaged and decisively beaten 47 different German divisions, representing 25 percent of the enemy's entire divisional strength on the western front.
The First Army suffered a loss of about 117,000 in killed and wounded. It captured 26,000 prisoners, 847 cannon, 3,000 machineguns, and large quantities of material." More than 1,200,000 Americans had taken part in the 47-day campaign.
