The Real 'Black Jack' Pershing Is Not a Hero

The truth about 'Black Jack' Pershing emerges.

He was in charge of US troops at the Argonne/Meuse battle of 11/11; the Marines and some Army units were ordered to capture as much German territory as possible before the Armistice at 11AM that very day.  That required the engineers to build a couple of floating bridges to reach the very heavily-fortified German side of the river.

...the rumors of an approaching armistice played a role in their decision. For several days, men had been talking about a possible end to the war. Unbeknownst to the men, the two sides actually signed a peace deal at 5:45 a.m. on the morning of November 11. But General Pershing chose not to provide that information to the men fighting on the banks of the Meuse. He merely passed along the order to cease fire at exactly 11:00 a.m. Many of the Leathernecks and soldiers on the front lines would perish in the intervening hours....

... Staccato fire from machine guns obliterated the relative silence. An enemy patrol set up their Maxims on the far bank and sprayed lead like a fire hose.

Men slid and slipped down the embankment next to the river, shrapnel from artillery shells tore through their ranks. One man counted 25 killed or wounded in the space of 100 yards. 

...Men dashed across the rickety contraption. Some made to the other side. Some, struck with machine-gun fire on the way, fell into the water. Many others never even got to the water; their bodies piled up on the eastern side of the river.

However, scores had made it across when the Germans scored a direct hit on the bridge. The men on the Western side of the river were now trapped in enemy territory. They formed a perimeter, dug in, and prepared to hold for as long as they could....

Pershing knew what he had done there.

...At a congressional hearing after the war, Pershing and his command would claim they were under the direction of Marshal Foch and had no orders to cease fighting until 11 a.m. on November 11....

This War was extremely unpopular in the US; it was Woodrow Wilson's baby.  Wilson was a True Believer in Globaloney, whereas the vast majority of Americans held to what George Washington had advised:  'keep out of foreign entanglements'.  In what seems to be a repeating problem,  Congress betrayed the population and went along with Wilson's demands.  The war made JPMorgan extremely wealthy, as it did for DuPont.

It also made a 110,000 or so US soldiers and Marines very dead.

Side-note:  Pershing was responsible for chasing Pancho Villa around in Mexico and had some Wisconsin cavalry from the Richards Street Armory along with him, including the great-uncle of yours truly.