John J. Pershing

Pershing grew up on a Missouri farm his father worked between stints running a country store, and at eighteen he took a teaching post at a school for Black children near Prairie Mound, one of the few jobs open to him without money for college. A competitive exam won him a place at West Point in 1882, he graduated thirtieth of seventy-seven, and he spent the next decade in the peacetime cavalry chasing Apache and Sioux bands across the territories. He taught military science at Nebraska while taking a law degree at night, then married Frances Warren, a senator's daughter, in 1905. Ten years later a fire at their Presidio quarters killed her and their three daughters while he was posted at Fort Bliss. Only his six-year-old son survived.

He chased Pancho Villa 350 miles into Mexico in 1916 without catching him, then in May 1917 took command of the American Expeditionary Forces and insisted, against British and French pressure, that American troops fight as an independent army rather than being fed piecemeal into depleted Allied units. He built that army from 27,000 men to more than two million, was promoted to full general — the first since Philip Sheridan — and pushed the costly Meuse-Argonne offensive to the last morning of the war, ordering attacks up to the 11 o'clock armistice that added nearly 11,000 casualties to a war already won. He served as Army chief of staff from 1921 to 1924 and in 1932 won the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir of the war he had come to command almost by accident.

The nickname that followed him, Black Jack, began as an insult for commanding Black cavalry troopers early in his career and was later smoothed into something like an honorific. It did not change his policy. As AEF commander he kept Black soldiers largely out of American combat units and loaned entire regiments to the French, who had asked for exactly that kind of soldier and got no argument from him. His private life ran on a similar split. Grieving his family for three decades, he carried on a secret relationship with the French portrait painter Micheline Resco, thirty-four years his junior, conducted through coded letters — and married her only in 1946, at 85, in a Walter Reed hospital room, a marriage the public did not learn of until after his death.

He died at Walter Reed on July 15, 1948, lay in state in the Capitol rotunda, and was buried at Arlington among the soldiers of the division he had commanded rather than among the generals. The Army he built ran the next war — Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur and Patton had all served directly under him — and the highway network he sketched as a planning exercise became the skeleton of the Interstate System eight years after his death. What still gets argued over is the last morning of World War One, and whether an army built with that much care needed to keep attacking an enemy that had already asked to stop.

John J. Pershing's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Pershing Rifles company
  A cadet drill company at Nebraska that grew into a national ROTC honor society 1894
• Punitive Expedition into Mexico mission
  10,000 troops sent 350 miles after Pancho Villa, who was never caught 1916
• American Expeditionary Forces mission
  Built from 27,000 men to more than two million 1917
• Pershing Map other
  A proposed national highway network that anticipated the Interstate System 1922
• My Experiences in the World War book
  Won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1932 1931

• 1886 aged ~26 Graduates West Point, thirtieth in a class of seventy-seven
• 1905 aged ~45 Marries Frances Warren, daughter of Senator Francis E. Warren
• August 27, 1915 aged 54 A fire at the Presidio kills his wife and three daughters Only his six-year-old son, Warren, survived.
• March 15, 1916 aged 55 Leads the Punitive Expedition into Mexico after Pancho Villa
• May 10, 1917 aged 56 Appointed commander of the American Expeditionary Forces
• November 11, 1918 aged 58 Orders offensives to continue up to the armistice hour Nearly 11,000 casualties came on the war's final day.
• September 13, 1924 aged 63 Retires from the Army on his 64th birthday
• 1946 aged ~86 Secretly marries Micheline Resco at Walter Reed Hospital
• July 15, 1948 aged 87 Dies at Walter Reed General Hospital

• Woodrow Wilson 1856–1924
  28th President who led the nation through World War I and championed the League of Nations. appointed him to command the AEF
• Theodore Roosevelt 1858–1919
  26th President known for progressive reforms, conservation efforts, and assertive foreign policy. praised his coolness under fire
• George C. Marshall 1880–1959
  Army chief of staff who organized U.S. victory in World War II and later designed the Marshall Plan. mentored as his aide
• Douglas MacArthur 1880–1964
  Commander who led major Pacific campaigns, oversaw Japan’s occupation, and became central to the Korean War controversy. served under him in the AEF