Most of his success came during  his command of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I. He was given the seemingly insurmountable task of inflating a force of 130,000 men to nearly 3 million expertly trained soldiers a task which he accomplished in 18 months.

Earlier in his military career he as part of the  Sixth Cavalry and spent the early years of his career fighting Native Americans to protect white settlers. 

Pershing next participated in the campaign to subdue the Sioux, or Lakota, tribes in the Dakota Territory where the U.S. government sought to eliminate the Ghost Dance, a Native American religious movement. A confrontation at Wounded Knee between the Lakota and the military resulted in gunfire. Between 200 and 300 Sioux men, women, and children were killed, along with 25-30 soldiers. The incident later became known as the  Wounded Knee Massacre. The Seventh Cavalry opens fire on the Lakota people at Wounded Knee. 

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Pershing went on to serve in the Philippines and then to the border and into Mexico to hunt the infamous Pancho Villa. He did this through the grief that he carried from losing his wife and daughters to a fire when he was away from home. Only his son had survived.

Pershing spent two years looking for Pancho Villa and never found him. Pershing said it was like “a man looking for a needle in a haystack with an armed guard standing over the stack forbidding you to look in the hay.”

As a general, Pershing regarded discipline as the most important attribute for attaining victory at any front and required his unit to be highly disciplined, leaving no room for error. His emphasis on discipline can be studied in his directive in the ‘General Principles Governing the Training of Units of the American Expeditionary Forces’ where he states “All officers and soldiers should realize that at no time in our history had discipline been so important; therefore discipline of the highest order must be exacted at all times” (‘General Principles,’ 1917). It was this strict adherence to the cadet codes and his rigid regulations that won him the nickname of ‘Black Jack’ for having fought alongside the African American (Vandiver, 1977). While this cold personna might have proved successful previously, it cannot be taken to be a positive leadership trait when it comes to the time of WWI given how fast the nature of war was changing due to modern technology. 

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Moreover, Pershing was against bending to the changing war strategies and remained old school about the superiority his open battlefield tactics. Pershing remained adamant that while his men were not very experienced when it came to the modern warfare tactics, he believed that his unit would defeat the German enemy after forcing them to come into an open battlefield. While this tactic is criticized on many fronts, it did allow Pershing to keep the American army independent and not be integrated into the French and British army as the latter forces had hoped. 

‘General Principles Governing the Training of Units of the American Expeditionary Forces’ included in, AEF GHQ, ‘Program of Training for the 1st Division, A.E.F.,’ (1917), in, World War Records, First Division, Vol. XX, Training First Division (1930) Washington D.C.: Army War College. 

Smythe, D. (1973) Guerrilla Warrior: The Early Life of John J. Pershing. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 

Vandiver, F. (1977) Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing, Vol. 1, College Station: Texas A&M Press.