Quotes About Pershing

maintain overseas cemeteries, Pershing became the first chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission, serving from 1923 until his death in 1948.

General Pershing now had what he wanted: proof that the AEF was the equal of its allies and the enemy. British generals, however, were less than awed by the American success at Saint-Mihiel. Since the Germans had intended to abandon the salient anyway, the Yanks, as one Briton put it, had not so much defeated the Germans as relieved them.

Those Yanks coming to help are going to need things," he said. "Their General Pershing asked for two thousand homers, to be used as messengers in the army. England has offered to send five hundred directly. And not just five hundred but the five hundred best. Many of you are among the best, true and tested. So there's no way around it. You're off to help our boys.

To understand the background to the most momentous telegram ever sent, we have to go back to July 1916. Jutland has just been fought, the British and their allies are dying in unprecedented numbers on the Somme, and the American general John Pershing is fighting in Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa. It isn't going well for him.

Pershing's expedition into Mexico after Villa had exploded one of our myths for a little while. We had truly believed that Mexicans can't shoot straight and besides were lazy and stupid.

General John Pershing's famous (if probably apocryphal) "Lafayette, we are here