John J. Pershing

John J. Pershing’s wartime role in France is defined by the tension between maintaining an independent American command and responding to an Allied emergency. The account presents him at the scale of a rapidly expanding force and, more personally, in two encounters with Captain Harry S. Truman: one at a maneuver and another at a division review, where Pershing praised Truman’s men and emphasized their care on the journey home.

Command and the American force

By the spring of 1918, the American Expeditionary Forces in France numbered nearly a million men. The scale of the build-up was striking: the previous July, when the first American infantry unit marched through Paris, only fourteen thousand American troops were in France. In April, 120,000 arrived; monthly arrivals were expected to rise to 250,000, with the eventual total reaching two million. Pershing’s command thus presided over a force expanding at extraordinary speed as the war’s outcome remained uncertain. Pershing had been determined that American troops should fight as a separate national command. The worsening military situation altered that position in practice. In June, with German forces again near the Marne and Allied leaders warning that the war might be lost unless American troops arrived quickly, more than 250,000 Americans were rushed to support the French under Marshal Ferdinand Foch. The account links this emergency deployment to the pressure of events, rather than presenting it as an abandonment of Pershing’s preference for an independent command.

Encounters with Truman

Pershing was present at a training maneuver attended by Truman. Truman was assigned command of a simulated artillery battalion, represented by officers playing the parts of batteries and regimental staff. Although Pershing himself was there, Truman wrote that the general did not come over to see whether he could fire the guns. The episode records Pershing’s presence at the exercise but offers no further account of his role in it. A later meeting was more personal. At a division review attended by Pershing and the Prince of Wales, Pershing shook Captain Truman’s hand and told him that he had a fine-looking group of men. He instructed Truman to bring them home as clean in body and conduct as when they had gone overseas. Truman took the order seriously. His subsequent account of command described the difficulty of enforcing discipline among 190 men, including assigning extra duty for unauthorized trips, while stressing his affection for the soldiers and his determination to apply rules consistently. Pershing’s brief charge therefore continued to matter beyond the review itself: Truman treated the welfare and conduct of his battery as part of his responsibility as its commander.

The limits of the portrait

The account shows Pershing chiefly through command decisions and brief encounters, not through private reflection or an extended portrait of his personality. Its clearest view of his leadership is the combination of a strong preference for separate American command with an emergency commitment to Allied cooperation, followed by a direct appeal to an officer to bring his men home in good condition. The two encounters with Truman differ in emphasis: at the maneuver Pershing remained a distant presence; at the division review he made a personal gesture of recognition and placed a practical obligation on the captain. Together, these moments locate Pershing within the chain of command that moved American forces from rapid expansion in France to service at the front and, eventually, the journey home.