At the start of the
United States' involvement in World War I, President
Woodrow Wilson considered mobilizing an army to join the fight.
Frederick Funston, Pershing's superior in Mexico, was being considered for the top billet as the Commander of the
American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) when he died suddenly from a heart attack on 19 February 1917. Pershing was the most likely candidate other than Funston, and following
America's entrance into the war in May, Wilson briefly interviewed Pershing, and then selected him for the command. He was officially installed in the position on 10 May 1917, and held the post until 1918. Pershing chose
Chaumont, France as the AEF headquarters. On 6 October 1917, Pershing, then a
major general, was promoted to full general in the
National Army. He bypassed the three star rank of lieutenant general, and was the first full general since
Philip Sheridan in 1888. (C-in-C) of the
American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), pictured here together with Major General
Tom Bridges of the
British Army, inspecting a Guard of Honor on Pershing's arrival at Liverpool, June 1917 As AEF commander, Pershing was responsible for the organization, training, and supply of a combined professional and draft Army and National Guard force that eventually grew from 27,000 inexperienced men to two
field armies, with a third forming as the war ended, totaling over two million soldiers. Pershing was keenly aware of logistics, and worked closely with
AEF's Services of Supply (SOS). The new agency performed poorly under generals
Richard M. Blatchford and
Francis Joseph Kernan; finally in 1918
James Harbord took control and got the job done. Pershing also worked with Colonel
Charles G. Dawes—whom he had befriended in Nebraska and who had convinced him not to give up the army for a legal career—to establish an Interallied coordination Board, the
Military Board of Allied Supply. Pershing exercised significant control over his command, with a full delegation of authority from Wilson and
Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. Baker, cognizant of the endless problems of domestic and allied political involvement in military decision making in wartime, gave Pershing unmatched authority to run his command as he saw fit. In turn, Pershing exercised his prerogative carefully, not engaging in politics or disputes over government policy that might distract him from his military mission. While earlier a champion of the African-American soldier, he did not advocate their full participation on the battlefield, understanding the general racial attitudes of white Americans.
George C. Marshall served as one of Pershing's top assistants during and after the war. Pershing's initial chief of staff was
James Harbord, who later took a combat command but worked as Pershing's closest assistant for many years and remained extremely loyal to him. 's grave in
Paris After departing from
Fort Jay at
Governors Island in
New York Harbor under top secrecy on 28 May 1917, aboard the , Pershing 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
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, he was reputed to have uttered the famous line "Lafayette, we are here," a line spoken, in fact, by his aide, Colonel
Charles E. Stanton. American forces were deployed in France in the autumn of 1917. In September 1917, the French government commissioned a portrait of Pershing by 23-year-old Romanian artist Micheline Resco. Pershing removed the stars and flag from his car and sat up front with his chauffeur while traveling from his AEF headquarters to visit her by night in her apartment on the rue Descombes. Their friendship continued for the rest of his life. In 1946, at 85, Pershing secretly wed Resco in his
Walter Reed Hospital apartment. Resco was 35 years his junior. While a few Americans, such as those attached to the 42nd Battalion, disobeyed the order, the majority, although disappointed, moved back to the rear. This meant that battalions had to rearrange their attack formations and caused a serious reduction in the size of the Allied force. For example, the 11th Brigade was now attacking with 2,200 men instead of 3,000. There was a further last-minute call for the removal of all American troops from the attack, but Monash, who had chosen 4 July as the date of the attack out of "deference" to the US troops, protested to Rawlinson and received support from Field Marshal
Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the
British Expeditionary Force (BEF). The American Buffalo Soldiers of the
92nd and
93rd Infantry Divisions were the first American soldiers to fight in France in 1918, but they did so under French command as Pershing had detached them from the AEF to get them into action. Most regiments of the 92nd and all of the 93rd would continue to fight under French command for the duration of the war.
Full American participation Organization in
Chaumont, France, October 1918 When General Pershing met General Pétain at Compiègne at 10:45pm on the evening of 25 March 1918, Pétain told him he had few reserves left to stop the
German Spring Offensive on the Western Front. In response, Pershing said he would waive the idea of forming a separate American I Corps, and put all available American divisions at Pétain's disposal. The message was repeated to General Foch on 28 March, after Foch assumed command of all allied armies. Most of these divisions were sent south to relieve French divisions, which were transported to the fight in Flanders. and Brigadier General
Fred W. Sladen inspecting the Guard of Honor of the 3rd Battalion,
7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division,
Vaucouleurs, France, 1918 By early 1918, entire divisions were beginning to serve on the front lines alongside French troops. Although Pershing desired that the AEF fight as units under American command rather than being split up by battalions to augment British and French regiments and brigades, the
27th and
30th Divisions, grouped under
II Corps command, were loaned during the
desperate days of spring 1918, and fought with the British
Fourth Army under General Rawlinson until the end of the war, taking part in the breach of the
Hindenburg Line in October. By May 1918, Pershing had become discontented with
Air Service of the American Expeditionary Force, believing staff planning had been inefficient with considerable internal dissension, as well as conflict between its members and those of Pershing's General Staff. Further, aircraft and unit totals lagged far behind those expected. Pershing appointed his former
West Point classmate and non-aviator,
Major General Mason Patrick as the new
Chief of Air Service. Considerable house-cleaning of the existing staff resulted from Patrick's appointment, bringing in experienced staff officers to administrate, and tightening up lines of communication. In October 1918, Pershing saw the need for a dedicated
Military Police Corps and the first U.S. Army MP School was established at
Autun, France. For this, he is considered the founding father of the United States MPs. Because of the
effects of
trench warfare on soldiers' feet, in January 1918, Pershing oversaw the creation of an improved
combat boot, the "
1918 Trench Boot," which became known as the "Pershing Boot" upon its introduction.
Combat , commanding the
91st Division, in the Argonne forest, 26 October 1918 American forces first saw serious action during the summer of 1918, contributing eight large divisions, alongside 24 French ones, at the
Second Battle of the Marne. Along with the British Fourth Army's
victory at Amiens on 8 August, the Allied victory at the Second Battle of the Marne marked the turning point of World War I on the
Western Front. In August 1918 the
U.S. First Army had been formed, first under Pershing's direct command (while still in command of the AEF) and then by Lieutenant General
Hunter Liggett, when the
U.S. Second Army under Lieutenant General
Robert Bullard was created in mid-October. After a relatively quick victory at
Saint-Mihiel, east of
Verdun, some of the more bullish AEF commanders had hoped to push on eastwards to
Metz, but this did not fit in with the plans of the Allied Supreme Commander, Marshal
Ferdinand Foch, for three simultaneous offensives into the "bulge" of the Western Front (the other two being the French Fourth Army's breach of the
Hindenburg Line and an
Anglo-Belgian offensive, led by General
Sir Herbert Plumer's British Second Army, in
Flanders). Instead, the AEF was required to redeploy and aided by French tanks, launched a major offensive northward in very difficult terrain at
Meuse-Argonne. Initially enjoying numerical odds of eight to one, this offensive eventually engaged 35 or 40 of the 190 or so German divisions on the Western Front, although to put this in perspective, around half the German divisions were engaged on the
British Expeditionary Force (BEF) sector at the time. '', 8 February 1918 The offensive was marked by a Pershing failure, specifically his reliance on massed infantry attacks with little artillery support led to high casualty rates in the capturing of three key points. This was despite the AEF facing only second-line German troops after the decision by
Erich Ludendorff, the
German Chief of Staff, to withdraw to the Hindenburg Line on 3 October – and in notable contrast to the simultaneous British breakthrough of the Hindenburg Line in the north. Pershing was subsequently forced to reorganize the AEF with the creation of the Second Army, and to step down as the commander of the First Army. When he arrived in Europe, Pershing had openly scorned the slow trench warfare of the previous three years on the Western Front, believing that American soldiers' skill with the rifle would enable them to avoid costly and senseless fighting over a small area of
no-man's land. This was regarded as unrealistic by British and French commanders, and (privately) by a number of Americans such as the former
Army Chief of Staff General
Tasker Bliss and even Liggett. Even German generals were negative, with
Erich Ludendorff dismissing Pershing's strategic efforts in the Meuse-Argonne offensive by recalling how "the attacks of the youthful American troops broke down with the heaviest losses". The AEF had performed well in the relatively open warfare of the Second Battle of the Marne, but the eventual American casualties against German defensive positions in the Argonne (roughly 120,000 American casualties in six weeks, against 35 or 40 German divisions) were not noticeably better than those of the Franco-British
offensive on the Somme two years earlier (600,000 casualties in four and a half months, versus 50 or so German divisions). More ground was gained, but by this stage of the war the
German Army was in worse shape than in previous years.
George V and General John J. Pershing inspecting men from every unit of the
U.S. 33rd Division which took part in the fighting at Hamel on 4 July and Chipilly on 8 August. Molliens, 12 August 1918. , Germany, April 1919 Some writers have speculated that Pershing's frustration at the slow progress through the Argonne was the cause of two incidents which then ensued. First, he ordered the U.S. First Army to take "the honor" of recapturing
Sedan, site of the
French defeat in 1870; the ensuing confusion (an order was issued that "boundaries were not to be considered binding") exposed American troops to danger not only from the French on their left, but even from one another, as the
1st Division tacked westward by night across the path of the
42nd Division (accounts differ as to whether
Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur, then commanding the 84th Brigade of the 42nd Division, was really mistaken for a German officer and arrested). Liggett, who had been away from headquarters the previous day, had to sort out the mess and implement the instructions from the Allied Supreme Command, Marshal Foch, allowing the French to recapture the city; he later recorded that this was the only time during the war in which he lost his temper, describing the event as "an atrocity". Second, Pershing sent an unsolicited letter to the Allied
Supreme War Council, demanding that the Germans not be given an armistice and that instead, the Allies should push on and obtain an unconditional surrender. Although in later years, many, including President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, felt that Pershing had been correct, at the time, this was a breach of political authority. Pershing narrowly escaped a serious reprimand from Wilson's aide,
"Colonel" Edward M. House, and later apologized. At the time of the
Armistice with Germany, another Franco-American offensive was due to start on 14 November, thrusting towards
Metz and into
Lorraine, to take place simultaneously with further BEF advances through
Belgium. In his memoirs, Pershing claimed that the American breakout from the Argonne at the start of November was the decisive event leading to the German acceptance of an armistice, because it made untenable the Antwerp–Meuse line. This is probably an exaggeration; the outbreak of
civil unrest and
naval mutiny in
Germany, the collapse of
Bulgaria, the
Ottoman Empire, and particularly
Austria-Hungary following
Allied victories in
Salonika,
Syria, and
Italy, and the Allied victories on the Western Front were among a series of events in the autumn of 1918 which made it clear that Allied victory was inevitable, and diplomatic inquiries about an armistice had been going on throughout October. President Wilson was keen to tie matters up before the mid-term elections, and as the other Allies were running low on supplies and manpower, they followed Wilson's lead. , British Field Marshal
Sir Douglas Haig, General
Ferdinand Foch and General John J. Pershing, all pictured here sometime in 1918 American successes were largely credited to Pershing, and he became the most celebrated American leader of the war. MacArthur, however, saw Pershing as a desk soldier, and the relationship between the two men deteriorated by the end of the war. Similar criticism of senior commanders by the younger generation of officers (the future generals of
World War II) was made in the British and other armies, but, in Pershing's defense, although it was not uncommon for brigade commanders to serve near the front and even be killed, the state of communications in World War I made it more practical for senior generals to command from the rear. He controversially ordered the First and Second Armies to continue fighting before the signed Armistice took effect. 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. Pershing doubted the Germans' good faith, and most of his contemporaries took the view he expressed to the
House Committee on Military Affairs in his testimony on 5 November 1919: The year of 1918 also saw a personal health struggle for Pershing as he was sickened during the
1918 flu pandemic, but unlike many who were not so fortunate, Pershing survived. He rode his horse, Kidron, in the Paris victory parade in 1919. ==Later career==