Pershing applied to West Point for the free schooling, not the army
A Missouri farm boy who taught Black children in his hometown sat the West Point exam because the education was free and better than anything nearby. John Pershing ended up leading America's army in the First World War and mentoring Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton and MacArthur.
Pershing grew up near Laclede, Missouri, where he was born on 13 September 1860; his great-grandfather had come from Alsace in 1749. After high school in 1878 he taught local African American pupils while earning a science degree from the State Normal School in Kirksville. At West Point from 1882 he rose to First Captain, the top cadet rank, and led the honour guard that saluted Ulysses S. Grant's funeral train, though he graduated only 30th of 77 in 1886. He toyed with studying law or joining an Oregon irrigation venture before committing to the army.
His first posting was the 6th Cavalry in the New Mexico Territory, where he was cited for bravery against the Apache. When the United States entered the First World War he took command of the American Expeditionary Forces, serving from 1917 to 1920. British and French leaders wanted American soldiers fed into their own armies as replacements, but Pershing insisted the AEF fight as one force under him, though some units served under British and Australian command and segregated Black units joined the French Army.
Troops rushed across without heavy equipment and borrowed Allied tanks, guns and aircraft. After battles at Belleau Wood and Soissons in 1918, his First Army erased the St. Mihiel salient in September, a German bulge held for three years. For the Meuse-Argonne offensive he moved about 600,000 soldiers into heavily defended forest and kept them fighting for 47 days, part of the Hundred Days push that led Germany to seek an armistice.
His record is contested. Critics fault his dependence on frontal assaults long after other armies had dropped them. He disliked the armistice and did not halt attacks in its final hours, when nearly 11,000 men, 3,500 of them American, became casualties on 11 November; he said he was obeying Ferdinand Foch, and Congress blamed no one. He remains the only American promoted in his lifetime to General of the Armies, and chose to keep wearing four stars. He died on 15 July 1948.
Source: John J. Pershing
