To speed up the arrival of American troops, they embarked for France leaving heavy equipment behind, and used British and French tanks, artillery, airplanes and other munitions.

For the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, Pershing shifted roughly 600,000 American soldiers to the heavily defended forests of the Argonne, keeping his divisions engaged in hard fighting for 47 days, alongside the French.

His reliance on costly frontal assaults, long after other Allied armies had abandoned such tactics, has been blamed for causing unnecessarily high American casualties.

[23] Pershing also commanded, ex officio, the honor guard that saluted the funeral train of President Ulysses S. Grant as it passed West Point in August 1885.

From Fort Assinniboine in north central Montana, he commanded an expedition to the south and southwest that rounded up and deported a large number of Cree Indians to Canada.

In March 1899, after suffering from malaria, Pershing was put in charge of the Office of Customs and Insular Affairs which oversaw occupation forces in territories gained in the Spanish–American War, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam.

This union with the daughter of a powerful politician who had also received the Medal of Honor during the American Civil War continued to aid Pershing's career even after his wife died in 1915.

[60] After serving as an observer in the Russo-Japanese War attached to General Kuroki Tamemoto's Japanese First Army in Manchuria from March to September,[61] Pershing returned to the United States in the fall of 1905.

In skipping three ranks and more than 835 officers senior to him, the promotion gave rise to accusations that Pershing's appointment was the result of political connections and not military abilities.

With tensions running high on the border between the United States and Mexico because of the Mexican Revolution, the brigade was deployed to Fort Bliss, Texas, on April 24, 1914, arriving there on the 27th.

[71][72] After the funerals at Lakeview Cemetery in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Pershing returned to Fort Bliss with his son, Warren, and his sister, May, and resumed his duties as commanding officer.

Frederick Funston, Pershing's superior in Mexico, was being considered for the top billet as the Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) when he died suddenly from a heart attack on February 19, 1917.

Baker, cognizant of the endless problems of domestic and allied political involvement in military decision making in wartime, gave Pershing unmatched authority to run his command as he saw fit.

After departing from Fort Jay at Governors Island in New York Harbor under top secrecy on May 28, 1917, aboard the RMS Baltic, Pershing arrived in France in June 1917.

Pershing removed the stars and flag from his car and sat up front with his chauffeur while traveling from his AEF headquarters to visit her by night in her apartment on the rue Descombes.

This difficulty was overcome by reducing the size of each American platoon by one-fifth and sending the troops thus removed, which numbered 50 officers and men, back to battalion reinforcement camps.

Monash sent the 33rd Division's commander, Bell, his personal thanks, praising the Americans' gallantry, while Pershing set out explicit instructions to ensure that US troops would not be employed in a similar manner again (except as described below).

[87] Under civilian control of the military, Pershing adhered to the racial policies of President Woodrow Wilson, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, and southern Democrats who promoted the "separate but equal" doctrine.

After a relatively quick victory at Saint-Mihiel, east of Verdun, some of the more bullish AEF commanders had hoped to push on eastwards to Metz, but this did not fit in with the plans of the Allied Supreme Commander, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, for three simultaneous offensives into the "bulge" of the Western Front (the other two being the French Fourth Army's breach of the Hindenburg Line and an Anglo-Belgian offensive, led by General Sir Herbert Plumer's British Second Army, in Flanders).

The offensive was marked by a Pershing failure, specifically his reliance on massed infantry attacks with little artillery support led to high casualty rates in the capturing of three key points.

[98] When he arrived in Europe, Pershing had openly scorned the slow trench warfare of the previous three years on the Western Front, believing that American soldiers' skill with the rifle would enable them to avoid costly and senseless fighting over a small area of no-man's land.

This was regarded as unrealistic by British and French commanders, and (privately) by a number of Americans such as the former Army Chief of Staff General Tasker Bliss and even Liggett.

Even German generals were negative, with Erich Ludendorff dismissing Pershing's strategic efforts in the Meuse-Argonne offensive by recalling how "the attacks of the youthful American troops broke down with the heaviest losses".

[101] Liggett, who had been away from headquarters the previous day, had to sort out the mess and implement the instructions from the Allied Supreme Command, Marshal Foch, allowing the French to recapture the city; he later recorded that this was the only time during the war in which he lost his temper, describing the event as "an atrocity".

[104] At the time of the Armistice with Germany, another Franco-American offensive was due to start on November 14, thrusting towards Metz and into Lorraine, to take place simultaneously with further BEF advances through Belgium.

In his memoirs, Pershing claimed that the American breakout from the Argonne at the start of November was the decisive event leading to the German acceptance of an armistice, because it made untenable the Antwerp–Meuse line.

[123] In 1937, Pershing created a custom full dress uniform to attend the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, denoting his rank with four gold stars embroidered on each sleeve.

[126]On July 15, 1948, Pershing died of coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure at age 87 at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C., which was his home after 1944.

[140] In 1940 General Pershing was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism in action leading an assault against hostile Moros at Mount Bagsak, on the island of Jolo in the Philippines on June 15, 1913.

In 1917, two years after the deaths of his wife Helen and three daughters, Pershing courted Anne Wilson "Nita" Patton, the younger sister of his protégé, George S.