Recommended: General Pershing and the U.S. Marines by Colonel Peter T. Underwood, USMC

Marine General Lejeune and Army General Pershing

I strongly  encourage our readers to download this 16-page article that was originally published in the winter 2019 issue of Marine Corps History. Its author, Col. Peter Underwood, stated intention was to examine "how Pershing’s purported attitudes toward Marines affected his decisions regarding Marine employment in the AEF." He examines this issue quite thoroughly,  but I also enjoyed all the details about the nuts and bolts of gathering  and deploying a huge number (for the small prewar Marine Corps) to a distant theater. Roughly half the Marines in Europe got to the front line and the others—a full brigade—served in the Services of Supply.  Another interesting section, for me, was the impact of the heavy casualties and the difficulty in gaining replacements in the 4th Marine Brigade, whose parent formation, the 2nd Division, effectively fought non-stop from the late-May crisis around Château-Thierry through the Armistice.

The article can be downloaded as a pdf document

HERE