In Search of “Black Jack” Pershing (Fall 2018 - World War I Special Issue | Volume: 63, Issue: 3)

In Search of “Black Jack” Pershing

AH article image

Authors: Gene Smith

Historic Era: Era 7: The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930)

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Fall 2018 - World War I Special Issue | Volume 63, Issue 3

Editor's Note: This essay, the last that Gene Smith wrote for American Heritage, was in our files when the historian passed away in 2012. Gene was a long-time favorite of our editors, having published 31 essays in the magazine over the years. 

Gene once wrote about himself in the third person,"If there was an afterlife...he'd love it for the opportunities offered to interview people he studied in life.” We hope that Gene has had a brandy somewhere with Black Jack.
 

Gen. John J. Pershing commanded American forces in Europe during World War I.
General of the Armies John J. "Black Jack" Pershing commanded the American Expeditionary Forcein Europe during World War I.

No matter how often he called, I still always jumped.

“Hi, it’s Jack Pershing.”

Who? What? Black Jack of the First World War wants to talk to me?

But, of course, it wasn’t the general on the phone. He died in 1948. This was his grandson, Colonel of the Reserves John Warren Pershing, born 1941. He was of great importance to a book I was doing on the general’s life that was eventually to include the stories of his son and grandsons. The general’s forbears had served in Colonial armies even before the Revolution, later in abolitionist-slaveholder skirmishes and then in the Civil War. He himself participated in the last Indian campaigns, Cuba, the Philippines, chasing Pancho Villa in Mexico, then the Great War. His son saw action in World War II. Then the grandsons in Vietnam. It was the two-hundred-year cycle of a family’s military history. I needed Colonel Pershing to tell me about the most recent times.

I was fearful about getting in touch with the colonel, worried that he’d tell me he wasn’t interested. Col. Pershing was a wealthy man, and knowing that the rich are not always forthcoming nor anxious for publicity of any kind. It took a long time before I nerved myself up to call the nearest of his five residences. When I got an answering machine I always hung up. I must have made twenty calls. Finally, I left a message.

Two days later: “Hi, it’s Jack Pershing.” I told him of my research, including six months of going through his grandfather’s papers in the Library of Congress. The general had saved everything. Many career officers, subject to frequent changes of station, throw things out rather than pay for shipment, but John J. Pershing kept letters sent and received to the folks back home when he was a second lieutenant chasing Geronimo out west, kept love letters to and from his wife, bills from hotels when a military observer during the Russo-Japanese War, letters to old West Point pals and relatives from along the border during the Mexican troubles, and France in 1917-1919 and during his stint as Chief of Staff and on into retirement. 

In researching his book about Pershing, the author also learned intriguing facts about his son, grandsons, and other family members.

Col. John Warren Pershing, Jack, listened less