Lesley James McNair (25 May 1883 – 25 July 1944) was an American Army officer who served during World War I and World War II. He attained the rank of lieutenant general during his life; he was killed in action during World War II, and received a posthumous promotion to general.
A Minnesota native and 1904 graduate of the United States Military Academy, McNair was a Field Artillery officer with a background in the Ordnance Department. A veteran of the Battle of Veracruz and Pancho Villa Expedition, during World War I he served as assistant chief of staff for training with the 1st Division, and then chief of artillery training on the staff at the American Expeditionary Forces headquarters. His outstanding performance resulted in his promotion to temporary brigadier general; at age 35, he was the Army's second-youngest general officer.
McNair's experience of more than 30 years with equipment and weapons design and testing, his administrative skills, and his success in the areas of military education and training led to his World War II assignment as commander of Army Ground Forces. In this position, McNair became the "unsung architect of the U.S. Army", and played a leading role in the organizational design, equipping, and training of Army units in the United States before they departed for overseas combat. While historians continue to debate some of McNair's decisions and actions, including the individual replacement system for killed and wounded soldiers, and a controversy over the use of tanks or tank destroyers as anti-tank weapons, his concentration on advanced officer education, innovative weapons systems, improved doctrine, realistic combat training, and development of combined arms tactics enabled the Army to modernize and perform successfully on the World War II battlefield, where the mobility of mechanized forces replaced the static defenses of World War I as the primary tactical consideration.
He was killed by friendly fire while in France to act as commander of the fictitious First United States Army Group, part of the Operation Quicksilver deception that masked the actual landing sites for the Invasion of Normandy. During Operation Cobra, an Eighth Air Force bomb landed in his foxhole near Saint-Lô when the Army attempted to use heavy bombers for close air support of infantry operations as part of the Battle of Normandy.
Early life
McNair was born in Verndale, Minnesota, on 25 May 1883, the son of James and Clara (Manz) McNair. He was the second-born of their six children, and the first son. His siblings who lived to adulthood were: sister Nora, the wife of Harry Jessup; brother Murray Manz McNair; and sister Irene, the wife of Harry R. Naftalin.
McNair attended school in Verndale through the ninth grade, the highest available locally; his parents then relocated to Minneapolis so McNair and his siblings could complete high school. After graduating from South High School in 1897, he competed successfully for an appointment to the United States Naval Academy. While he was on the Naval Academy waiting list as an alternate, he began studies at the Minnesota School of Business in Minneapolis, where he concentrated primarily on mechanical engineering and statistics courses.
Frustrated with the wait to start at the Naval Academy, in 1900 McNair competed for appointment to the United States Military Academy and took an examination offered by U.S. Senators Cushman Kellogg Davis and Knute Nelson. Initially selected as an alternate in July 1900, he was quickly accepted as a member of the class that began that August. While at West Point, his fellow students nicknamed him "Whitey" for his ash blond hair; they continued to use it with him for the rest of his life. The description of McNair which accompanied the photo of him in West Point's yearbook for his senior year refers to him as "Pedestrian Whitey" and details an incident when he had to walk from Newburgh to West Point, a distance of , after having missed the last train while returning from visiting his fiancée in New York City; the yearbook also contains an anonymously authored poem, "'Whitey's' Record Walk", about the same incident.
Several of McNair's classmates also went on to prominent careers in the Army, including George R. Allin, Charles School Blakely, Robert M. Danford, Pelham D. Glassford, Edmund L. Gruber, Henry Conger Pratt, Henry J. Reilly, Joseph Stilwell, and Innis P. Swift. McNair graduated in 1904, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. The top five or six graduates usually chose the engineer branch; McNair's high class standing (11th of 124) earned him a place in the second choice of most high-ranking graduates, the artillery branch.
Early career
McNair was first assigned as a platoon leader with the 12th Battery of Mountain Artillery at Fort Douglas, Utah. While there, he requested duty with the Ordnance Department, and passed a qualifying examination. After approval of his transfer request, he was first assigned to Sandy Hook Proving Ground, New Jersey, where he began a lifelong interest in testing and experimenting with new equipment and weapons. Initially, McNair's Ordnance testing centered on improving the mountain guns used by units including his 12th Battery for artillery support of troops in rugged terrain where limbers and caissons could not travel.
After assignment to the staff of the Army's Chief of Ordnance from 1905 to 1906, McNair was assigned to the Watertown Arsenal, where he completed self-directed academic studies in metallurgy and other scientific topics. In this posting, he gained experience with both laboratory and practical methods of experimentation, including analyzing bronze, steel, and cast iron to determine the best materials to use in manufacturing cannons and other weapons. In addition, he gained firsthand experience with the uses and applications of several foundry machines, including forges, steam hammers, lathes, planing machines, and boring machines. His business college background in statistical analysis and engineering (including technical drawing) helped make him successful at testing and experimentation; as a result of his experience at Watertown, for the rest of his career the Army frequently relied on him to oversee boards that developed and tested weapons and other equipment, and made recommendations on which items were most suitable for procurement and fielding. He was promoted to temporary first lieutenant in July 1905, and permanent first lieutenant in January 1907. In May 1907, McNair was promoted to temporary captain. (His higher temporary ranks applied in the Ordnance branch, but not in the Artillery.)
Pre-World War I
In 1909, McNair returned to the Artillery branch and was assigned to the 4th Field Artillery Regiment at Fort Russell, Wyoming. Assigned to command of Battery C, he earned accolades for his leadership skills and technical expertise. Jacob L. Devers, who was assigned to Battery C after his 1909 West Point graduation, recalled McNair as an outstanding commander who set a superior personal example, and knew how to motivate his subordinates to perform to a high standard. During his battery command, McNair also worked with mixed success on recommendations to modernize pack howitzers, pack saddles, ammunition carriers, and other equipment (much of it of his own design) for the Army's mule-transported mountain artillery. In 1909, McNair commanded the 4th Artillery's Battery D at Fort Riley, Kansas, during tests designed to determine the battle-worthiness of different types of defensive works if they were attacked by various types of cannons and howitzers. In 1911, he received three patents (998,711; 998,712; 1,007,223) for his designs of new artillery projectiles.
McNair's skills in technical drawing, engineering, prototype building, and statistical analysis began to be known Army-wide; in 1912 the commandant of the Field Artillery School requested him by name for assignment to his staff. Instructors at the school had spent more than a year gathering information on 7,000 rounds fired during tests and field exercises; because the school was short-staffed, the commandant called on McNair to compile the data into firing tables that would make it easier for Artillery crews Army-wide to plan and control indirect fire. While carrying out this assignment in 1913, he also spent seven months in France to observe and gather information on the French Army's artillery training, education, and employment.
In April 1914, McNair was promoted to permanent captain, and from April to November 1914, McNair took part in the Battle of Veracruz as the 4th Field Artillery Regiment's commissary officer. Assigned following another by name request, this time from regimental commander Lucien Grant Berry, McNair was responsible for procuring, storing, maintaining, accounting for, and distributing the regiment's materiel, including equipment and weapons. During 1915 and 1916, he was again assigned to the Field Artillery School, where he continued to work on procedures for the implementation of the firing table data he had published. He also continued to experiment with different types of artillery pieces so he could make manufacturing and procurement recommendations as the Army began to prepare for possible involvement in World War I. He returned to the 4th Field Artillery Regiment for the Pancho Villa Expedition on the Texas-Mexico border; initially an unassigned staff officer available for additional duties, he later commanded a battery.
World War I
In April 1917, the United States entered World War I. The next month, he was promoted to major and assigned to temporary duty as an instructor for the officer training camp at Leon Springs, Texas. After his Leon Springs assignment, McNair was assigned to the newly created 1st Division, then located at Camp Stewart, in El Paso County, Texas. Assigned to the division headquarters as assistant chief of staff for training, McNair was given responsibility for the organization's pre-deployment mobilization, individual soldier training, and collective unit training. When the division departed for France in June, McNair shared quarters aboard ship with the division's assistant chief of staff for operations, Captain George C. Marshall. During their long ocean voyage, they forged a personal and professional bond that they maintained for the rest of their careers.
McNair was promoted to temporary lieutenant colonel in August, soon after his arrival in France, and was assigned to the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) headquarters as chief of artillery training and tactics in the AEF staff's training division (G-5). He was promoted to temporary colonel in June 1918, and temporary brigadier general that October; at age 35, he was the second-youngest general officer in the Army. (Pelham D. Glassford, a West Point classmate and fellow field artilleryman, was also promoted to brigadier general in October 1918, and he was three months younger than McNair.) He continued to impress his superiors with his technical and tactical expertise, and at the end of the war he received the Army Distinguished Service Medal from General John J. Pershing, the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the AEF, and the French Legion of Honor (Officer) from Philippe Pétain. The citation for the Army DSM reads:
The Armistice of 11 November 1918 ended the war, and McNair continued to serve in the post-war occupation of Germany. In June 1919, he was named to the AEF board that was charged with studying the problem of providing adequate mobile indirect fire support to infantry during combat. This panel, called the Lassiter Board after its chairman, Major General William Lassiter, was one of several formed by the AEF to review wartime plans and activities, and make recommendations for the Army's future equipment, doctrine, and training.
Post-World War I School of the Line