Pershing in England

On the morning of 8 June 1917 Major-General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, landed at Liverpool. He had come with his staff on the British liner Baltic, which had left New York on 28 May. The ship had anchored in the Mersey late the previous evening. The last days of the voyage were the most nerve-racking. Pershing’s chief of staff, Colonel James Harbord, noted in his diary that in the waters where German submarines hunted the passengers were told to sleep in their clothes, and the Baltic steamed a zigzag course. There was relief only when American destroyers came out to meet them.

Welcome in Liverpool

On board the Americans were greeted by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, the local admiral and Lieutenant-General Sir William Pitcairn Campbell, commander of the military district, followed by several dozen journalists and newsreel cameramen. On the quay a guard of honour of the Royal Welch Fusiliers was waiting, with a band that played the American anthem and with a white goat, the regimental mascot. Pershing inspected the company and stopped by a young soldier wearing two wound stripes to ask where he had been wounded. The journalists noted the gesture with approval. After a short press conference on the ship the general and his officers travelled by special train to London. At Euston station they were met by the United States ambassador Walter Hines Page, Vice-Admiral William Sims, who since April had been directing the American navy in Europe, Field Marshal John French and the Lord Mayor of London. Pershing stayed at the Savoy Hotel as a guest of the British government, and the soldiers of his escort were quartered in the Tower.

Four days in London

On the morning of 9 June Pershing was received at Buckingham Palace by King George V. After a private conversation of about twenty minutes the king greeted the staff officers and told them, according to Harbord’s notes, that it had been his dream to see the two great English-speaking nations fighting side by side for civilisation. On Sunday 10 June the Americans attended a service at Westminster Abbey. On 11 June the general lunched with the king and Queen Mary, in the afternoon had a talk with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson, and in the evening was the guest of Ambassador Page. At the table sat the prime minister David Lloyd George, the foreign secretary Arthur Balfour, the secretary of state for war Lord Derby, the First Sea Lord Admiral John Jellicoe, General Jan Smuts and the French ambassador Paul Cambon. On 12 June Pershing watched a training demonstration near Brentwood in Essex by troops intended for home defence, with an attack on trenches, covering fire from trench mortars and exercises in gas masks. In the evening Lloyd George gave a formal dinner in his honour.

The visit was above all a demonstration. According to Harbord no foreigner had perhaps ever been received in England so effusively, and the newspapers and newsreels presented him to the public as a promise of the help that the war-weary Entente needed. There were as yet no real troops behind Pershing, as the soldiers of the first division were only just boarding ships in New York harbour. The talks at the War Office and with Robertson nevertheless gave him a first picture of the situation, including the shortage of tonnage on which depended how quickly the American army would cross the ocean. Harbord noted that the war could be felt at every step: blacked-out streets, posters urging people to save bread and crowds of soldiers from all over the empire. At first light on 13 June the staff left Charing Cross station for Folkestone, from where it crossed to France under destroyer escort.