Return to Home Page

John Pershing

When Gen. John J. Pershing rode through the streets of Paris in June 1917, two months after the U.S had entered the Great War in Europe, the city was overjoyed. The New York Times reported, “General Pershing took all Paris By storm today, from the President of the Republic, commanders of the army and Ministers of the Government down through all ranks and grades to the humblest little midinettes, who lined his route to throw flowers and kisses in the direction of his automobile. No other man since the war began received such a magnificent, wholehearted welcome and no man could have risen to meet it in a more splendid and dignified manner.”

Legend had it that, on his arrival, Pershing visited the statue of Lafayette, hero of the American Revolution, and declared, “Lafayette, we are here,” though Pershing would insist that an underling said it.

At that point, the French assumed that Pershing would soon bring hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who would fill the depleted lines of French and British troops. That wasn’t quite what Pershing had in mind. Named the head of the American Expeditionary Force in February 1917, Pershing refused General John Pershing Gen. John Pershing arrives in France and visits the statue of Lafayette. Photo courtesy of Great War Primary Document Archive, www.gwpda.org/photos.) to allow American soldiers to be used merely as fill-ins. He was determined to pull together an army of one million American men in Europe, and to have that army fight as a unit.

The benefit to this approach was clear—it would be more orderly and less haphazard than simply plugging in Americans with foreign units, and it would help create a strong reputation for America’s fighting power. But the drawbacks were difficult for the French and British to stomach. Pershing spent half of 1917 and much of 1918 training and amassing his force in France while the British and the French were withstanding German assaults.

Under pressure from French generals Foch and Petain, as well as British Gen. Haig, Pershing began allowing American divisions to join the French and British to help thwart a series of German offensives in the spring of 1918. The A.E.F. as a whole, though, did not officially begin action until September 12, 1918, when the army was assigned to attack the St. Mihiel salient. Pershing led the army to a big success, taking St. Mihiel in just one day.

There is no doubt that, by the time the Americans became wholly engaged in the war, Germany’s military and will to fight was depleted. But Pershing would long chafe at the notion that the A.E.F. was not essential to winning the war for the Allies, insisting that other Allied commanders were downplaying the American contribution to victory in order to limit their place at the table for the peace conferences. He may have been scorned by some of his peers in the Allied armies, but when Perhsing traveled around Europe in 1919, he was greeted as a hero by the masses. When he returned to America on September 10, 1919, he was given a ticker-tape parade.

Five days earlier, Pershing was given the highest honor ever awarded a living American soldier, when he was named General of the Armies. Only George Washington had ever held that title.

Pershing died in 1948, at age 87.

Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Borders