 Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Walter Matthow. A nation's greatness depends on the quality of the leaders of producers in times of crisis. We Americans have been very fortunate in this respect, particularly in regard to the military commanders who led our armies in times of national peril. Their record of success is unparalleled in the history of the world. Who are these men? Do we really know them? Do we know how they lived, what they thought? Do we know what special qualities of heart and mind they possessed which qualify them to have the destiny of a nation placed in their hands? The big picture has prepared a series of pictorial biographies of some of the great military leaders of American history. High on any soldier's roll call of honor is the name of General John Joseph Pershing. Or as he was called with admiration and respect, Blackjack Pershing. In a remarkable career that began on the half-remembered time of the last century and ended with the dropping of the first atomic bomb, Pershing gave himself devotedly to the service of his country. He left a legacy of strength, simplicity and honor that will remain etched in the souls of his countrymen for all time. This is his story. The story of John J. Pershing begins a century ago in the heart of the Great Midwest. Missouri was a troubled state when Pershing was born at Le Cleed in 1860. Bitterness and controversy had raked its valleys and the winds that moved through its fields in the years of John Pershing's early youth blew hot from the battlegrounds of the Civil War. As a boy of five, he stood and watched the soldiers from his town and county return from the final campaign at Appomattox. And after that, as the nation itself began to bind its wounds, Missouri turned its whole attentions to the taming of its rugged but productive soil. And Missouri boys grew to their manhood in those distant years of long ago on a regimen of hard work and piety. The time and the home of his youth shaped Pershing for the years of greatness. Those years began as have the public careers of so many of America's heroes on the plane at West Point. In 1886, at the age of 25, Pershing was graduated from the Military Academy. The qualities of leadership about which the world would one day hear a great deal had already begun to show clearly. In his final year, he was elected president of his class and appointed senior captain of cadets. In the 1880s, rebel Indian tribes in the West were still the greatest threat to American lives and property. And it was the lot of most young professional officers to be pressed into service in these campaigns to make the West secure. Lieutenant Pershing, Cavalry, saw his first action the year of his graduation in the fighting in the Southwest, which brought an end to the war against the Apaches, led by the fierce and wily Geronimo. Later, serving as a leader of Indian scouts, he participated in the final campaign against the rampaging Sioux in South Dakota. In the years of peace that followed the Indian wars, Pershing left the West and served as a military instructor at West Point. The period of peace, however, was soon shattered by the war with Spain after the sinking of the battleship Maine. These are actual motion pictures of American ships staining into Havana Harbor in 1898 and American troops landing in Cuba. This film was only recently released by the laboratories of the inventor of motion pictures, Thomas Edison. One of the units fighting with distinction in the memorable drive on Santiago was the 10th Cavalry and one of the officers fighting with valor in the 10th Cavalry was John J. Pershing. He was cited for his personal gallantry and his commanding officer said of him, Pershing is the coolest man under fire I ever saw. When the stars and stripes were raised in victory, Pershing himself later said, It lifted us out of ourselves. It was the soldier's silent Ave Maria. The Spanish-American war abundantly demonstrated Pershing's courage, but it remained for a subsequent event the quelling of insurrectionary forces and the newly acquired Philippine Islands to bring out his qualities as a diplomatic. His assignment was to subdue the Morals, a proud and fierce tribe, who began to cause trouble after the withdrawal of the Spaniards following the Spanish-American war. Pershing, now a captain, not only subdued them, he won their friendship as well. An exhibition of military and diplomatic skill that attracted the attention of the authorities in Washington. President Theodore Roosevelt personally applauded Pershing's accomplishments. And in 1905, while Pershing was serving as US observer of the war between Japan and Russia, Roosevelt promoted him from captain to brigadier general over 862 officers who were senior to him. In 1915, Pershing was in command of the Southwestern Division along the Mexican border, defending American interests against increasingly frequent raids by bandits across the border. It was at this time that the great personal tragedy of his life occurred. His wife and three daughters were lost in a fire which raked the Presidio at San Francisco, where they were living in his absence. Only his son was saved. Characteristically, Pershing bore his loss with silent fortitude and turned his wholehearted effort to the new duty to which his country called him. Command of the punitive expedition into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa, the most bold and reckless of all the Mexican bandits, who had destroyed American lives and property in a brutal raid on Columbus, New Mexico. Daringly and courageously for nearly a year, Pershing led his troops over 400 miles of trackless desert under the most trying and hampering of conditions. When the expedition was withdrawn, bandit harassment had been greatly reduced. And the American people, whose heroes must be made of enduring stuff, had found in John J. Pershing a unique study in dedication to duty and unflinching loyalty. The American Cavalry's firefights in the Chihuahua Desert in Mexico were only a small part of the conflagration that was searing the world. German aggression had reduced great parts of Europe to rubble and uprooted great masses of Europe's population. When German lawlessness on the high seas began to add American lives to the casualty lists, it was obvious that the United States could not avoid participation in the great conflict which had become known with grim appropriateness as the World War. Enter this war, said President Woodwell Wilson in his address before Congress, only because there is no other way of defending our rights. The professional army was small and the only hope lay in a great citizen army which had to be raised up literally overnight. When Pershing was named to head the American Expeditionary Force that would go to France, the nation applauded. For the first time in history, American soldiers would fight in the glare of world attention with the entire world having a direct stake in the outcome of their effort. The commander-in-chief, now a major general, arrived in Europe in June ahead of his troops. Shortly thereafter he was promoted to full general, a rank only four Americans, Washington, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan had held before him. A spirit moved across America in those memorable months of 1917, uniting the people as they had never been united before, touching their effort with a faith and a patriotic fervor which still live in the music that animated the nation's soul. The challenges in France were monumental. He had the task of shaping and training an army force which in a year and a half would expand to two million men. Pershing firmly believed that three qualities were necessary for a light victory, an offensive spirit, hoodie on the battlefield, and effective use of individual weapons. He trained his growing army in these principles despite the elaborate system of trench defense in which the western front had been paralyzed. Conflicts came with the allies themselves who wanted to use the new American troops as replacements in their own divisions. But Pershing held out for an integral American army which would fight under its own flag and its own commanders. The prestige of the nation itself would stand or form on the performance of that army in the test of battle. The test came with the massive German offensive which began in the spring of 1918. For almost four years, the battle line had held relatively steady. But now the Germans countered on victory. Their plan was to separate the British armies from the French in a devastating series of blows. Thousands of tough and specially trained troops hit the Allied line. And in a succession of drives, they shattered the British front and broke through Allied defenses. The Allies counter-attacked. And for the first time since 1914, the western front was aflame with open warfare. Pershing postponed his plan to weld an American army and he offered Marshal Foch, Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies in France, the free use of every American man and gun. When the Germans cut through the Allied lines in a thrust to the Somme river, the world had its first substantial chance to see the Yanks in action at Cantigny. Pershing threw the first division in to help stop the German drive here. This division took Cantigny and held it, despite violent and sustained counter-attacks. In another breakthrough, the Germans rolled across the defenses on the Aine river, stretching from Soissant to Rass, in a driving relentless force which struck panic into the French nation. In three days, the German tide had reached the Marne river and was less than 40 miles from Paris. Pershing moved the second and third U.S. divisions into the area around Chateau Thierry to help stem this onslaught. Both divisions responded with spectacular spirit and success. The third division, in its battle for the Marne crossings, wrote one of the most brilliant pages of our military annals, said General Pershing. One of its regiments, the 38th Infantry, earned the proud designation Rock of the Marne. The second division, holding the road between Chateau Thierry and Paris, began pushing the Germans back. U.S. Marines, fighting with the second division, reclaimed important ground in a fierce contest known to history now as the Battle of Bellow Wood. Counter-attacked forward and by the end of July, the entire Marne salient was removed. The tide had now turned. The initiative had passed to allied hands where it would remain. Eight U.S. divisions had participated in the successful counter-offensive and their performance had met their commander's expectations and exceeded all others. Bravo the young Americans of British newspaper Tropez and a French dispatch reported that their victories had electrified the world. The dough boy had proved his ability as a fighter and it was obvious to all that the constantly increasing American forces were to be the decisive factor in the war. Marshal Foch decided the time was ripe for one great coordinated allied offensive. The AEF's first assignment was to be the reduction of the Saint-Miel salient, a projection 16 miles into the allied line below Verdun, which the Germans had held for four years and which hampered lateral communications along the battlefront. The Saint-Miel offensive, which began on September 12th, was the first operation in the war carried out by a complete American army under separate and independent control of General Pershing. Striking success. In two days the Yanks took their objectives and the salient was reduced. Now America's soldiers were moving to the beat of the muffled drums of history. Because they had fought so decisively as an integrated American force, they were moving in the long tradition of their country, a tradition stretching back across the flats of Yorktown through the rolling fields of Gettysburg, up the rugged slopes of San Juan Hill. The man who had welded them into this integrated force had by now made his own unique mark on the history of his times. As a tactician seeking victory through fire and movement on a fluid battlefield, Pershing was proving himself superb. One of the AEF, who knew him best by the nickname Blackjack, he was no myth. The battle was his as well as theirs. He had confidence in them and they gave him their trust and respect. The final action for the Americans was an assault against the German lines on a broad front extending from the Meuse River to the Argonne Forest. They made a field of glory of their battleground that violent autumn in the province of Lorraine and in the hearts of their countrymen, a strong pride moved like wind across the water. But now there was also a deep and gripping awareness of the cost of victory and in the cadence of the America of that dim and distant time, along with the crash of cannon, echoes also the haunting poetry written by one of her soldier's songs with a timelessness that made it an enduring part of the literature of the age. It may be death shall take my hand and close my eyes and quench my breath. It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with death on some scarred slope of battered hill. The Meuse-Argonne offensive involved the most severe fighting that an American army had ever been called upon to wage in all the nation's history through that time. But doggedly, steadily, never once retreating, the Yanks pushed forward through the fire-swept fields of no man's land into the very teeth of the enemy's defenses along the invincible Hindenburg line. Your achievement, General Pershing told them when it was all over, is scarcely to be equaled in America's history. At 11 o'clock in the morning, November 11, 1918, the soldiers laid down their guns and cheered. Their cheers were echoed in every city of the Allied world. I pay supreme tribute, General Pershing said when the guns had stilled, to our officers and soldiers of the line. When I think of their heroism, I am filled with emotion which I am unable to express. Pershing himself was decorated by nine foreign governments, as well as his own country. He stayed in Europe for a while after the war was ended. He was with President Wilson when the President came over for the Versailles meeting of the Big Four, Clemenceau of France, Lord George of Britain, Orlando of Italy, as well as Wilson of the United States. Then Pershing bad goodbye to his old comrades-in-arms. He returned home to receive a hero's welcome. A grateful Congress conferred upon him the rank of General of the Armies of the United States. He is the only man in history to have held that rank. He became Chief of Staff of the Army in 1921 and shaped a national defense program. When Marshal Fosch visited the United States in the years immediately after the war, Pershing was on hand to greet him. He took delight in showing the Marshal the evidence of solid French-American friendship which the two commanders had done so much to forge. When the body of the unknown soldier was returned from France for burial, Pershing led the nation in its tribute. Showing the measure of his own respect for the nation's heroes, Pershing wore only the victory medal which was awarded to every veteran of the World War. Pershing retired from active service in 1924, but he remained active in the life of the nation. As Chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission, he traveled to Europe many times to witness the dedication of memorials to American soldiers. His interest in his country's defenses remained as keen as it had ever been. He paid particular attention to the development of the country's future military leaders. Overtaking him, Pershing called soberly upon his fellow citizens to recognize the growing aggression that was threatening the world. When war did come again, Pershing at 81 instantly offered his services. President Roosevelt accepted, saying in words that reflected the feeling of all the people, you are magnificent. Throughout World War II, he gave the benefit of his military wisdom to those who led America to victory in the second and greatest World War. When Pershing died in 1948 at the age of 87, the nation mourned the passing of this leader who was a symbol as well as a man. Men slipping into middle age and beyond it felt the stir of memory. The trenches which separated the years of their youth from the years that came after. The big parade into history in which they had marched in close ranks behind the commander. And young men who had fought their war a generation later, who had indeed been born after Pershing had given his last command, could feel something of the same sharp pull. For such was the magic of the Pershing name and the strength of the Pershing character that Americans of all ages could feel that their own lives had in some important way been bound up in his. Pershing lies today in honored repose in the fraternity of the nation's heroic dead on the slopes of Arlington National Cemetery. But his name and his memory are part of the enduring tradition that never dies. For John Joseph Pershing, general of the armies, like others before him in the long line of American giants, rose to leadership and met its challenges at precisely the moment his country needed him. So that the destiny of the two, man and nation, were part of the same momentous adventure. His mission was to create an army and he did, a mighty army, without which the great war could not have been won. And at the same time an army cast in the unique and authentic American mold. A forerunner of his superbly skilled and powerful force, which is today's modern army. In the doing, he handed down to his countrymen a tradition of military pride. But more than anything else, he touched a strain of glory in his people. And perhaps more than any man of his time, he awakened them to a new vision of their own greatness.