Lesley J. McNair - World War II

World War II

McNair was Chief of Staff of GHQ, U.S. Army from July 1940 to March 1942. He was promoted to Major General in September 1940, and temporary Lieutenant General in June 1941.

In March 1942, General McNair became Commanding General, Army Ground Forces. As such, he was responsible for the organization, training and preparation of the U.S. Army for overseas service. He was instrumental in preparing large-scale divisional and corps exercises to provide Army commanders with some experience in controlling large forces in simulated combat. However, McNair's emphasis on abbreviated basic combat training schedules for inductees, as well as his programs for the training and supply of individual replacements to combat units would later face widespread criticism after the U.S. Army invasion of North Africa in 1942, criticism that continued until the end of the war in Europe.

McNair, who had already received a Purple Heart for being wounded in the North African Campaign, was killed in his foxhole July 25, 1944 near Saint-Lô during Operation Cobra, by an errant aerial bomb dropped during a pre-attack bombardment by heavy strategic bombers of the Eighth Air Force.

General Omar Bradley, his ground forces stymied, had decided to use carpet bombing to break the German lines. Carpet bombing enemy lines was used as breakthrough artillery at the start of many operations by the Americans and the British instead of the Soviet method of concentrated conventional artillery. 1,500 heavies, 380 medium bombers and 550 fighter bombers dropped 4,000 tons of high explosives and napalm. Bradley was horrified when 77 planes bombed short:

"The ground belched, shook and spewed dirt to the sky. Scores of our troops were hit, their bodies flung from slit trenches. Doughboys were dazed and frightened....A bomb landed squarely on McNair in a slit trench and threw his body sixty feet and mangled it beyond recognition except for the three stars on his collar."

McNair is buried at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Normandy, France. His tombstone originally listed him as a lieutenant general, the rank he held at death. Although he was posthumously promoted to the rank of general by the US Congress in 1954, the American Battle Monuments Commission was initially unaware of the change. His gravestone was not changed to reflect his final rank of general until 11 November 2010, making him the highest-ranking military officer buried at that cemetery.

His son, Colonel Douglas McNair, chief of staff of the 77th Infantry Division, was killed two weeks later by a sniper on Guam and is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.

Washington Barracks in Washington, D.C. was renamed Fort Lesley J. McNair in his honor in 1948. McNair Barracks in Berlin, Germany & McNair Kaserne in Höchst (Frankfurt am Main), Germany were also both named in his honor. McNair Kaserne was closed and turned over to the German government when the 17th Signal Battalion moved to Kitzingen, Germany in 1992.