Marshall , Dwight D. Eisenhower , Omar Bradley , Lesley J. McNair , George S. Patton , and Douglas MacArthur. During his command in World War I, Pershing resisted British and French demands that American forces be integrated with their armies, essentially as replacement units, and insisted that the AEF would operate as a single unit under his command, although some American units fought under British and Australian command, notably in the Battle of Hamel and the breaching of the Hindenburg Line at St Quentin Canal , precipitating the final German collapse.
Pershing also allowed at that time segregated American all-Black units to be integrated with the French Army. To speed up the arrival of American troops, they embarked for France leaving heavy equipment behind, and used British and French tanks, artillery, airplanes and other munitions.
In September at St. Mihiel , the First Army was directly under Pershing's command; it overwhelmed the salient — the encroachment into Allied territory — that the German Army had held for three years. For the Meuse-Argonne Offensive , Pershing shifted roughly , American soldiers to the heavily defended forests of the Argonne, keeping his divisions engaged in hard fighting for 47 days, alongside the French.
The Allied Hundred Days Offensive , of which the Argonne fighting was part, contributed to Germany calling for an armistice.
Pershing was of the opinion that the war should continue and that all of Germany should be occupied in an effort to permanently destroy German militarism. Pershing is the only American to be promoted in his own lifetime to General of the Armies , the highest possible rank in the United States Army. Some of his tactics have been criticized both by other commanders at the time and by modern historians.
