John Pershing
From Turtledove
| John J. Pershing | |
| |
| Historical Figure | |
| Timeline: | OTL |
| Nationality: | United States |
| Religion: | Episcopalians |
| Date of Birth: | 1860 |
| Date of Death: | 1948 |
| Cause of Death: | Heart failure |
| Occupation: | Soldier |
| Affiliations: | United States Army |
| Timeline: | Southern Victory |
| Appearance(s): | American Front
through |
| Date of Birth: | 1860 |
| Date of Death: | 1929 |
| Cause of Death: | Shot to death |
| Occupation: | Soldier, Military Governor |
John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing, GCB (1860–1948) was an officer in the United States Army. He led the American Expeditionary Force in World War I and was regarded as a mentor by the generation of American generals who led the United States Army in Europe during World War II, including George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, and George Patton.
[edit] John Pershing in Southern Victory
John Joseph Pershing (1860-1929) was a general in the United States Army during the Great War. He commanded US forces in eastern Kentucky. He managed his campaign well, but was upstaged by the commander in western Kentucky, George Armstrong Custer, who was the bitterest of Pershing's rivals.
After the war, Pershing commanded US garrisons in Utah. During this assignment, he worked with Custer's former adjutant, Abner Dowling, as his second-in-command. Despite Dowling's prior association with Custer, he and Pershing found they were able to work quite well together--as Custer himself had found when stationed in Utah over forty years earlier, during the Second Mexican War, as second-in-command to John Pope, a rival of Custer's old superior, George McClellan. To the surprise of both men, at a dinner event in Custer's honor, Pershing and Dowling each shed tears of sympathy for Custer and the humiliation he endured in forced-retirement.
Pershing was killed by a Mormon sniper in Salt Lake City in 1929 in the aftermath of the stock market crash, dramatically underscoring his unfinished thought that Utah was not ready for normalization. He was succeeded as commander of the Utah garrison by Dowling, the next senior officer in the state.
| Office | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Alonzo Kent | Military Governor of Utah (Southern Victory) 1924-1929 | Succeeded by Abner Dowling |
