Until the Last Trumpet Sounds

Gene Smith

Description

Critical Praise for Gene Smith On Until the Last Trumpet Sounds

"The best recent compact study of the commander of the American Expeditionary Force of World War I." Booklist

"A six-star effort . . . captures Pershing better than anyone has before." The Grand Rapids Press

On The Shattered Dream

"A storyteller of history, Gene Smith is one of the very best in his field." The Washington Post

On When the Cheering Stopped

"A brilliantly written and dramatically effective work of history . . . Smith is a prodigious researcher, an artful writer." The New York Times

On American Gothic

"A ripping good tale . . . the story rivets you. You can t put the book down." The New York Times Book Review
"You Are Not Going into the Army, Are You?" Frankie.

The Commander.

General of the Armies of the United States.

Warren.

Dick.

Source Notes.

Bibliography.

Index.

Sujets

• Histoire
• John J. Pershing
• Gene Smith
• World War I
• Military history of the United States
• Military
• United States
• Civil War
• History
• John Pershing
• Première Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 02 mai 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470350775
• Langue: English

Extrait

U NTIL THE L AST T RUMPET S OUNDS
O THER B OOKS B Y G ENE S MITH
American Gothic: The Story of America s Legendary Theatrical
Family-Junius, Edwin, and John Wilkes Booth
The Ends of Greatness
The Dark Summer: An Intimate History of the Events That Led to
World War II
Lee and Grant: A Dual Biography
High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Impeachment and Trial of
Andrew Johnson
Maxmilian and Carlotta
The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression
When the Cheering Stopped: The Last Years of Woodrow Wilson
U NTIL THE L AST T RUMPET S OUNDS
T HE L IFE OF G ENERAL OF THE A RMIES J OHN J. P ERSHING
G ENE S MITH

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
New York Chichester Weinheim Brisbane Singapore Toronto
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 1998 by Gene Smith. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc.
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012, [phone], fax [phone], E-Mail: [e-mail].
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Gene
Until the last trumpet sounds: the life of General of the Armies
John J. Pershing/Gene Smith.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 0-471-35064-8 (paper)
1. Pershing, John J. (John Joseph), 1860-1948. 2. Generals-United States-Biography. 3. United States. Army-Biography.
I. Title.
E181.P57S64 1998
355 .0092-dc21
[B]
97-33033
CIP
C ONTENTS

Prologue
I You Are Not Going into the Army, Are You?
II Frankie
III The Commander
IV General of the Armies of the United States
V Warren
VI Dick

Source Notes
Bibliography
Index
P ROLOGUE
It was hardly a surprise that the old man was finally dead, for he was rising eighty-eight-would have reached it in fewer than two months. When President Truman s train pulled into Washington s Union Station from Philadelphia, where he had just accepted the Democratic Party s nomination for another White House term, he was given the news. Then it was released to the public.
The papers ran obituaries prepared years earlier. There was a brief ceremony at the hospital chapel and then in the night the body was taken to lie in state under the Capitol dome. Before the hour set for public entry, President Truman walked in, coming, he said, in no other capacity than ex-captain of field artillery. After twenty-four hours of people filing by, middle-aged men sometimes coming to brief halt at attention with a salute, stance and motion of course not as sharp as once they had been, the funeral got under way. Some five hundred thousand people turned out to watch, nearly half of the District of Columbia s population, the Associated Press reported. Upper Sixteenth Street and Constitution Avenue were blocked off by police wearing black mourning patches beneath their badges.
To the beat of muffled drums and sound of dirges the mile-long procession moved at measured pace, the Army Ground Forces band of eighty-five pieces, the Third Mechanized Cavalry Reconnaissance s clanking half-tracks and jeeps and scout cars bristling with machine guns and radio antennae, a field artillery battalion of the 82d Airborne Division with thirty-seven vehicles and a dozen 105 mm howitzers, two squadrons of Air Force troops from Bolling Field, sailors of the Potomac River Naval Command, a company of marines, an engineer construction battalion, the Army Band of one hundred pieces, a battalion of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, almost five hundred third classmen of the U.S. Military Academy, carrying M-ls, in summer whites with crossbelts and gleaming brass breastplates and officered by fifty-two first classmen, clergymen, and then the caisson drawn by six perfectly matched gray horses of the Ceremonial Company of the Third Infantry Regiment, three with soldiers aboard who held reins only in left white-gloved hand, the right kept at the side. The casket was of brown metal and covered with a flag. Behind came a jet black horse, saddle and trappings of black and with boots reversed in the stirrups and saber hanging, a soldier leading. There followed, held aloft by a flag-bearer, the dead man s personal banner, red and with silver stars, and then scores of marching generals, the out-of-the-army Dwight Eisenhower back in uniform for this and with Chief of Staff Omar Bradley by his side. Then came pallbearers on foot and honorary pallbearers in cars, and the family along with three thousand guests, the presidential widows Edith Wilson and Grace Coolidge, members of the cabinet and the U.S. Supreme Court with their wives, senators, representatives, admirals, foreign ambassadors with their military attach s in gilded dress uniform. A flight of Air Force P-80s screamed overhead, disappearing to make a turn and come back. Every American flag in Washington was at half-staff, and those at all army installations and every navy station and on every vessel.
The cortege went its slow way around the Lincoln Memorial and then on to the bridge over the Potomac. Rain started falling and Eisenhower asked Bradley if he thought they ought to get into cars. The answer was that he did not and so they went on, getting soaked along with everybody else. They had of course not known the dead man well, being only junior officers fresh from the Point during his great days of years before.
The head of the procession reached the entrance to the vast cemetery at Arlington. As the caisson went through the high and elaborate metal gates, artillery pieces began firing off a nineteen-gun salute. (The president had ordered that the customary twenty-one-gun salute due to himself upon entering a military installation be forgone upon this occasion.) The cortege made its way to the great marble amphitheater. Drum ruffle and bugle flourishes sounded and the casket was removed to a low bier. The rain swept off to be replaced by Washington s blazing summer sun glittering on the boxes lining the gallery around the amphitheater perimeter and the white stone benches on the terraced floor below, where sat the invited guests and great banked rows of flowers from the Old Employees of the American Battle Monuments Commission, the American Gold Star Mothers, hundreds of American Legion posts across the country, the Chinese Refugees from Mexico 1917, the Philippines Club, former president Hoover, the British ambassador on behalf of King George VI, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, Jr., and Frank P. Helm of Sausalito, California, who in the worst moment of the dead man s life held him in his arms for terrible hour after hour as he shivered and cried.
The services were stark, a few hymns, a few prayers. Remember Thy servant John Joseph, O Lord, intoned Maj. Gen. Luther D. Miller, chief of chaplains, according to the favor which Thou bearest unto Thy people, and grant that, increasing in knowledge and love of Thee, he may go from strength to strength, in the life of perfect service, in Thy heavenly kingdom. The casket was put back on the caisson and the horses drew it to the grave site. The march of another soldier is ended, Chaplain Miller called out. His battles are all fought and his victories all won and he lies down to rest awhile awaiting the bugle s call. The dead man had said something of the same nature years earlier, selecting his burial site: When the last call sounds I want to stand up with my soldiers. The remark was unusual for him, for he rarely made reference to religious matters, and even more rarely employed poetic metaphors.
The family and the honorary pallbearers, many of the last with canes and hearing aids and in need of physical assistance, took seats under a canopy protecting them from the fierce sun. The coffin was placed for lowering into the grave, the old man within wearing four stars on each shoulder of antiquated uniform with Sam Browne belt and saber chain and on breast Distinguished Service Cross and Distinguished Service Medal, but none of the foreign decorations, France s Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor and Military Medal, Great Britain s Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (which entitled him to be addressed as Sir John when on British soil, a practice he discouraged), Italy s Grand Cordon of the Military Order of Savoy and Grand Cross of the Order of St. Marizio e Lazzaro, Japan s Order of the Rising Sun, Montenegro s Oblitich Medal and Grand Cordon of the Order of Prince Danilio I, the Greek Order of the Saint Savior, the Serbian Order of the Star of Kara-Georges with Swords of the First Class, Romania s Order of Mihai Bravul, Poland s Polonia Restituta, the Grand Cross of Commander of the Order of the White Lion from Czechoslovakia, the others. All around the burial site, situated by itself on a rise distant from other graves, stood gum tree, oak, hickory, cedar, and sassafrass. It was four and a third miles to the Capitol where he had lain in state on the catafalque that once held Lincoln s body and later that of the Unknown Soldier who had served under him and whose last res