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May 14, 2020
HS315

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General Pershing was someone caught between the times.  Militarily he was great at commanding small units in open warfare.  He had great organizational skills and political savvy. Ulysses Grant said that Pershing was the first "great managerial commander" of the modern age. Pershing was completely ill prepared for World War I and the type of war being fought there.

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John Joseph Pershing was born in Laclede, Missouri, on 13 September 1860.  Pershing graduated North Missouri Normal School and them became a teach in a rural school for a short time.  In 1882 Pershing accepted an appointment to the United States Military Academy were he made cadet first captain his senior year and graduated 30th of 77 cadets in 1886 and was commissioned in the cavalry.

After graduation from West Point, Perching headed to the American Frontier and participated in the last great Indian campaign of the Ghost Dance War of 1890. From there he was assigned as the chief
military instructor at the university of Nebraska, were he also earned his law degree.  Pershing was the regimental quartermaster for the 10th Cavalry, which was an African American unit in which he the nickname of "Black Jack" came from.  Theodore Roosevelt promoted Black Jack from captain to Brigadier General in 1906 for his service in Mindanao and his later service as military governor of Moro Province.

Pershing next commanded the 8th Brigade out of Presidio of San Francisco, but spent little time there, because soon after his arrival in 1814 he was ordered to the Mexican border amid tension due the detention of American sailors in Tampico. He spend most of his time there for 2 years in which time his wife and three daughters died in a tragic early morning fire on 27 April 1915 at their residence in Presidio of San Francisco. The was his last assignment before taking command of the American Expeditionary Forces in April of 1916.

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Attributes:
Politically Savvy
Believed in strict discipline
Great organizational commander
Open Warfare
Stand up to Authority (courage)
Flaws:
Trench Warfare
Strict
Inexperience (modern warfare, army size, weapons)

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Accomplishments:
AEF Commander - Creating a separate and independent American army.
War against Pancho Villa
Governor of Moro Province
Cuba 1898
Failures:
Steep learning curve in Modern Warfare
Weapons and Tactics
American exceptionalism (Pride)

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Analysis: Why Studying the leader is important today

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Analysis: Why Studying the leader is important today

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In modern warfare, leaders, great commanders don't leader from the front anymore.  Battlefields are too large with multiple fronts. "The modern commander-in-chief is no Napoleon who stands with his brilliant suite upon a hill..." (Gabel) Pershing had an impossible job, and it is unsure if any other general could have adapted any better.  He went from 218,000 officers and soldiers in the U.S. Army and exploding to nearly 4 million soldiers in 19 months.  Pershing was in charge of all American forces in Europe, not a job for one man.  He had the task of organizing an entire army in the middle of a war, and not just organizing but training soldiers.

He gives us the dos and don'ts, even though it is highly unlikely that many armies will have to be build from the ground up as Pershing had to do. Today we have Special Forces who get about the closest to what Pershing had to do, but even then they have a massive logistical background that just didn't exist in the beginning of the 20th century. Pershing was criticized by leaders from France and Great Britain, but refused to bend to their request of augmenting American soldiers into the weakened French and British units, and instead was adamant about America standing apart and getting credit for its part in The Great War.

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(1860-1948)
Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces during
World War I: 1917-1918

Picture from (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

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At first, General Pershing was ineffective and by his own standards should have been fired. But he was doing the best he could under the circumstances, and no other general in that time frame could have done much better given the same circumstances.  General Pershing's ability to navigate the political mine field of World War I and not cave to political pressures is a feat in itself. General Pershing was slow to delegate authority to his other generals, but afterwards was able to focus are the larger issues that effected the army, which was organizing the logistical nightmare that such a war could cause. Training was an extreme shortfall, due to lack of training time and weapons that where virtually unknown to Americans at that time.

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Gabel, C. R. (n.d.). Great Commanders. Combat Studies Institute Press.

Ray, M. (2020, May 5). John J. Pershing. Retrieved from Encyclopaedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-J-Pershing