The salute of General Black Jack Pershing, Commander in Chief of the American Expeditionary Force, landing in France, June, 1917. Pershing landed in Boulogne on June 13.
Le Salut du Général Pershing, Commandant en Chef des Troupes Américanines, à la terre de France. (Juin 1917).Message dated September 18, 1917R et E[nvoyée?] le 20-9-1917Reverse:Postmarked September 18, 1917
"You are about to enter this great battle of the greatest war in history, and in that battle you will represent the mightiest nation engaged. That thought itself must be to you a very appealing thought and one that should call forth the best and the noblest that is in you. Centuries of military tradition and of military and civil history are now looking toward this first contingent of the American Army as it enters this great battle. You have behind you your own national traditions that should make you the finest soldiers in Europe to-day. We come from a young and aggressive nation. We come from a nation that for one hundred and fifty years has stood before the world as the champion of the sacred principles of human liberty. We now return to Europe, the home of our ancestors, to help defend those same principles upon European soil. Could there be a more stimulating sentiment as you go from here to your commands, and from there to the battlefield?"
Excerpt from 'Remarks to the Officers of the 1st Division,' delivered on April 16, 1918 by General John J. Pershing, Commander of the American Expeditionary Force. The Division arrived in France in June, 1917, and had spent the intervening months in training or holding a quiet sector of the front in Lorraine. When Pershing spoke, the second of German General Erich Ludendorff's 1918 Spring Offensives, Operation Georgette, the Lys Offensive, was in progress. It had followed immediately after the Somme Offensive Operation Michael. Both were directed at the British front, and both captured substantial ground.
World War I and America by A. Scott Berg, page 462, copyright © 2017 by Literary Classics of the United States, publisher: The Library of America, publication date: 2017
1918-04-16, 1918, April, Pershing, 1st Division, Black Jack Pershing's salute
