Lesley J. McNair

Lesley J. McNair

General Lesley James McNair (May 25, 1883 – July 25, 1944) was an American Army officer who served during World War I and World War II. He was killed by friendly fire when a USAAF Eighth Air Force bomb landed in his foxhole near Saint-Lô during Operation Cobra as part of the Battle of Normandy.

McNair, Frank Maxwell Andrews, Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. and Millard Harmon, all lieutenant generals at the time of their deaths, were the highest-ranking Americans to be killed in World War II; McNair and Buckner were both promoted posthumously to general, on July 19, 1954, by Act of Congress.