John J. Pershing. The Iron General

Description

John J. Pershing started his career as an Indian fighter on the frontier. He ended it as the greatest war hero America had ever seen. In between was enough triumph and tragedy for several lives. This searching profile from Biography pieces together a portrait of an ambitious, driven man haunted by a searing tragedy--the loss of his wife and three daughters killed in a fire. Military historians detail how he transformed a tiny, 128,000-man force into an army of four million men, and then led it to victory in the greatest battle America had ever fought--the Meuse Argonne offensive in October 1918. That Pershing was no tactical genius is clear, but his crude force made up in numbers what they lacked in strategy. As the senior U.S. Army General of World War I, Pershing was granted the rank of 'General of the Armies' in 1919 in recognition of his performance as the commander of the American Expeditionary Force.

Runtime

45 min

Subjects

Contributor

Geography

Genre

Date of Publication

[2012], c2000

Database

Films on Demand

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