Books, Arts & Manners: A Million Bloody Rugs

Pershing: General of the Armies, by Donald Smythe (Indiana University Press, 399 pp., $27.50)

John J. Pershing “was a remote, awesome figure—aloof, austere, forbidding . . . the incarnation of West Point training and tradition.” In 1906, while observing the Russo-Japanese War as a captain, he suddenly jumped over 862 officers and was promoted to brigadier. In 1916, the year after his wife and three daughters died in a fire, he led a punitive expedition against Pancho Villa. This volume (the second of two) opens with his appointment as commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Force and his departure for France in May 1917. He had the complete support of his superiors in Washington and (in the days of poor communication) was a virtually autonomous leader. He had no peer in the army, and the other American generals, compared to him, looked like lumpy and tired old men. After the commander, the most outstanding soldiers were Marshall, MacArthur, and Patton. The latter believed soldiering was “making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country”—not you.

About the Author

Jeffrey Meyers

Mr. Meyers is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of John Huston: Courage and Art.

Featured Tags

Pershing: General of the Armies, by Donald Smythe (Indiana University Press, 399 pp., $27.50)

John J. Pershing “was a remote, awesome figure—aloof, austere, forbidding . . . the incarnation of West Point training and tradition.” In 1906, while observing the Russo-Japanese War as a captain, he suddenly jumped over 862 officers and was promoted to brigadier. In 1916, the year after his wife and three daughters died in a fire, he led a punitive expedition against Pancho Villa. This volume (the second of two) opens with his appointment as commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Force and his departure for France in May 1917. He had the complete support of his superiors in Washington and (in the days of poor communication) was a virtually autonomous leader. He had no peer in the army, and the other American generals, compared to him, looked like lumpy and tired old men. After the commander, the most outstanding soldiers were Marshall, MacArthur, and Patton. The latter believed soldiering was “making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country”—not you.