Background
John Leonard Hines was born on May 21, 1868 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, United States. He was the son of Edward Hines, a merchant and postmaster, and Mary Frances Leonard, both of whom were natives of Ireland.
John Leonard Hines was born on May 21, 1868 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, United States. He was the son of Edward Hines, a merchant and postmaster, and Mary Frances Leonard, both of whom were natives of Ireland.
Hines attended the local one-room school and later a normal school near Athens, West Virginia, where he was tutored by a dedicated teacher who helped him win a competitive appointment to the United States Military Academy in 1887. He was retroactively awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1933, along with all other living graduates of the academy.
After initial assignments at posts in the western United States, Hines volunteered for service in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and won a Silver Star for gallantry under fire at Santiago.
After serving in the Philippines during the Philippine insurrection, Hines had a succession of broadening assignments, including running a coaling station in Nagasaki, Japan, for army transports, serving as chief quartermaster for an army maneuver in Pennsylvania and for the Jamestown Exposition in Virginia, and serving as adjutant general and sometime chief of staff for General Pershing's expedition into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa. Having won Pershing's respect, Hines was included in the initial group of officers the general took with him to France to form the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in May 1917.
Never entirely happy serving as a staff officer at a desk, Hines was delighted when, in October 1917, newly promoted to colonel, he was given command of the Sixteenth Infantry Regiment in the First Division and moved to the front. His coolness under fire, his ability to inspire the officers and men under his command, and his skill in developing a competent staff out of inexperienced temporary officers led to his promotion to brigadier general in May 1918 and to command of the First Brigade in the First Division. Hines's performance in the heavy fighting in the Montdidier-Cantigny area led to his further promotion to temporary major general in August 1918 and to command of the Fourth Division, as well as a Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism in action near Soissons.
His division was on the offensive continuously for twenty-five days, longer than any other division in the AEF, and yet, he was seemingly imperturbable when subjected to such severe stress. On one occasion his commanding officer found him sleeping peacefully in the front lines among his troops. For his successes in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, he was moved up to command of the Third Army Corps, making him the only officer in the AEF to command successively a regiment, a brigade, a division, and a corps, and the only American to do so in action since Stonewall Jackson. Back in the United States after the Armistice, Hines held divisional and corps area commands until called to Washington, by Pershing to be his deputy chief of staff in 1922. Although Hines disliked staff duty, he accepted the call, having made it his practice never to ask for an assignment and never to refuse one.
He brought considerable skill to the post even though he had never served in Washington before. He had a gift for solving problems, and his wide-ranging experience in supply, finance, and personnel in his years as a subaltern now paid off. Pershing was often absent in France on American Battle Monuments Commission problems, so Hines frequently served as acting chief of staff.
In 1924, upon Pershing's retirement, he became chief of staff but only for two years because, under the prevailing statutes, no officer could serve on the General Staff for more than four years without returning to duty with the troops. As chief of staff, Hines faced an almost insurmountable challenge. With Congress in a budget-cutting mood, about the best he could do was fight a rearguard action to save what was left and keep some fragments of the army intact. It was, Hines said, the hardest work he ever did. A poor speech-maker, he came off rather badly on ceremonial occasions and in testifying before Congress.
When he went out on inspection trips as chief of staff, unit commanders knew that the most effective way to handle him was to schedule a military ball. Because he was only fifty-eight when he stepped down as chief of staff in 1926, Hines continued on active duty as a major general until his retirement in 1932. He died in Washington.
The nickname Birdie, conferred on Hines by his fellow cadets because of his springy step, stuck throughout his forty-one years of active service. Standing well over six feet and weighing some 200 pounds, he was an impressive figure when commissioned a second lieutenant in 1891.
Pershing ranked him "first on the list of generals known to me. " While his role as chief of staff could hardly be called distinguished, he was a superb troop leader. A meticulous planner, he insisted on being up on the front, where he could "see for himself. "
Hines was such a taciturn soul that the journalist Frederick Palmer said of him, "He could be silent in more languages than any man I know. "
Hines was a social success, for he loved to dance. Once in London, with Pershing, he danced with Nancy Astor and swept her off her feet, leading her to declare him the best thing that ever came out of West Virginia.
An amateur botanist especially interested in wildflowers, he was a great favorite with children.
Hines stressed physical fitness and rode horseback, even when he was chief of staff, at least an hour every day.
Hines married Harriet "Rita" Schofield Wherry, the daughter of Brigadier General William M. Wherry, his former commanding officer, on December 19, 1898; they had two children.