The Washington herald., 1919-09-08

OF tnt UT shuppNu ~ ftA
Nisited or secured from official r
Each day n complete chapter
Washington Herald.
BY Harold F. wheeler.
/ Copyright, 1919. by The Wheeler Syn
dicate, Inc)
CHAPTER I.
Pershing!
Leader Of the Americans-his name
is a household word to the universe
today. Thousands - hundreds upon
| observation-disclosures him as the man
who dealt the final and decisive blow
in saving civilization from the Hun.
But who is Pershing?
Everyone knows somewhat of him
as the general in supreme command
Of the American Expeditlonary Force.
And everyone knows sketchily some
what of his life. But,
WHO Is HE?
WHENCE DID HE COME?
WHAT HAS BEEN HIS LIFE?
Out in His Home Town.
There is a little town in Central
NIissouri-Laclede. in Linn County,
Missouri, a town of hardly 100 per-
sons-where those questions may be
answered. There General John Joseph
Pershing was born on September 1&
1850. There 1 went to learn about
hiR did.
OF course. there are other places,
too, where one must go-to Lincoln
Neb., where live his sister and his
only son; to West Point, where he at
tended the United States Military
Academy and from which he was
graduated in 1886; to New York and
Washington: to many. many other
places. I went to them.
But it is in Laclede, or just on the
outskirts Of the town. that General
Pershing made his bow on ufe's
stage. It was in that town that he
spent hts childhood and grew to early
manhood. And today in Laclede, men
and women now. all Of them-some,
indeed, close to life's end-are still
living who were babies when the gen
eraI was a baby. children when he
was a child. They played with him
They fought with him. They studied
with him. They went to school with
him. They know him.
He may be Gen. John J. Pershing,
a world dignitary, to all the uni
verse. To those folks in Laclede
who grew up with him there, he is
and always will be John or Johnnie
Pershing. He is John or Johnnie to
the white folks and to the negroes
there. though sometimes the latter
not aIways-use the prefix Mister"
or Master" And the stories those
Laclede folks can tell and do tell
about John or Johnnie!
What He Did rs a Boy.
They will tell you how. when only
years old Johnnie received his
baptism of war and bloodshed in a
bushwhacker raid; how he stood
bravely by, never iinching, while
two men were shot and killed before
him.
They will tell you how, a little
later, as leader of his gang" he led
storming parties to victory against
snow trenches and forts held by the
other gang"
They will tell you how he learned
to shoot. to swim. to hunt rattle
snakes. "buzzers." he called them
then.
They will tell you Of his playtime
and of his studytime. Of his fights
and frolics. They viii tell you of
the first time he smoked; of a raid
on a peach orchard. They will tell
you how he trounced a bully.
All these things and more they
will tell you, even how he won an
appointment to West Point by the
clever analysis of a sentence, and
how he came to take the examIna-
tion for Experimentation a
burglar chanced to ROB his home.
talked with those LacIede folks
almost every one of them. They
told me their stories. There were
some OF them who were men and
women when John was born-one
who was present when he came into
the world; there were his teachers,
still alive, and his old nurse. Some
of them, naturally, had moved from
Laclede. But / found them and
talked with them. So. in Laclede
it is that any story Of the generals
life that is true, that seeks facts,
must start. Back. then, with the
memories OF these old Laclede folks
to serve as a guide. to the Laclede
to more than half a century ago
to the Laclede of 1853.
First. though. back for a moment
even beyond that time-to Alsace
in 1749, the same Alsace which Gen.
Pershing wrested from the Hun.
Name Originally Was Pfoerschin.
Records in the possession of Mrs.
Hattie l. Hagar, of Okmulgee, Okla,
a second cousin of the general, show
that one Frederick Pershing, a French
Huguenot, was living in Alsace in