[1] His father, Jeremiah Bernard Collins, had left Dunmanway, County Cork in Ireland as a young boy in the early 1860s to join the rest of the family in Cincinnati, Ohio.

They moved across the river to Algiers, near the terminus and rail repair shops of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which employed many workers of Irish descent.

A letter in the Library of Congress in the Pershing correspondence asks James to go to the remount station in the Shenandoah Valley to pick a new horse for the general to ride.

[3] Collins enrolled in Tulane University, but his mother's uncle, the mayor of New Orleans, was asked by a local member of Congress if there was a bright young man who could "stay the course" at West Point.

With tireless energy, keen perception, and able execution of his manifold duties he rendered especially meritorious services to the American Expeditionary Forces.