John J. Pershing

John J. Pershing was a United States Army officer who commanded the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe during the First World War. His earlier career included service in the Indian Wars, Cuba, the Philippines and the 1916 expedition into Mexico pursuing Pancho Villa.

In France Pershing insisted that American forces should ultimately fight as a distinct army rather than be permanently dispersed among British and French units. After the war he became General of the Armies and served as army chief of staff, remaining a central figure in American military professionalisation.

Gordon Corrigan’s Great War Commanders brings together Gordon Corrigan’s studies of three soldiers whose First World War experiences shaped very different military reputations. Douglas Haig commanded the British Expeditionary Force through the battles of attrition and the final campaigns of 1918; John J. Pershing built and led the American Expeditionary Forces; and the young Erwin Rommel fought as a junior German officer in France, Romania and Italy. In Jeff Shaara’s To the Last Man, on the ground, French commanders struggle to hold an exhausted army together while the United States prepares to send an independent force under John J. Pershing rather than disperse American troops among Allied formations.