Lesley James McNair was born on May 25, 1883, in Verndale, Minnesota. He was the second of four children and older of two sons of James and Clara (Manz) McNair.
Both parents were Presbyterians; the father, who had emigrated with his parents from Campbelltown, Scotland, to Ohio about 1854, was a lumber merchant and operated several general stores in northwestern Minnesota.
As a youth, McNair hoped to become a naval officer and obtained an alternate appointment to Annapolis, but he tired of waiting and at age seventeen entered West Point by competitive examination. Sandy-haired, wiry, and of medium height, he distinguished himself at the Military Academy as a student of mathematics.
He was graduated in 1904, eleventh in a class of 124, and was commissioned an artillery officer. After duty in Hawaii and as professor of military science at Purdue University, he attended the Army War College, from which he was graduated in 1929.
McNair received the honorary degree of LL. D. from Purdue University in 1941 and the University of Maine in 1943.
McNair spent most of the decade after his graduation with the 4th Field Artillery. In 1912, as a student at the School of Fire at Fort Sill, he made the studies, "Probabilities and the Theory of Dispersion, " that provided a basis for improving gun firing techniques. In 1913, he spent eight months in France observing French artillery practice; the next summer he took part in the expedition of Gen. Frederick Funston to Vera Cruz, and in 1916-17 that of Gen. John J. Pershing into northern Mexico.
During World War I, McNair's acquaintance with Pershing led to his assignment to the 1st Division, with which he went to France in June 1917. He served much of the time with Pershing's general headquarters as an artillery expert and forward observer, becoming at age thirty-five the second youngest brigadier general in the American Expeditionary Forces; for his work on the coordination of field artillery fire with infantry combat he earned the Distinguished Service Medal.
Reverting to his permanent grade of major after the war, McNair spent two years as student and instructor at the army's schools at Fort Leavenworth. As assistant commandant of the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill, McNair had much to do with setting and achieving high standards of training for regular officers, with developing extension courses for officers of the National Guard and Organized Reserves, and with working out new methods for coordinating artillery fire that came into use in World War II.
After several intervening assignments, including duty with the Civilian Conservation Corps, McNair in 1937 was promoted once more to general officer rank and given command of the 2d Field Artillery Brigade. His next duty, as commandant of the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, was abruptly terminated in early summer 1940 following the fall of France and the ensuing preliminary mobilization of American forces, which required the closing of the senior army schools.
Now Marshall called him to Washington to superintend the organization and training of the mobilizing ground combat forces, a task McNair performed with outstanding skill and seemingly tireless energy during the next four years.
From August 1940 until March 1942, he served as chief of staff of General Headquarters, of which Marshall was nominally the commander, and thereafter until July 1944 as commanding general of the Army Ground Forces.
McNair was promoted to major general in September 1940, lieutenant general in June 1941, and (posthumously) general in 1945. No armchair general, he spent about a third of his time on field inspections. After Pearl Harbor, he also insisted on assimilating the lessons of battle into training as promptly as possible and obtained them by sending his own observers overseas.
In April 1943, McNair himself traveled to North Africa to observe the fighting in Tunisia. As he had done so often in World War I, he went as far forward as he could to see the results of artillery firing and was seriously wounded on his first day at the front. Five weeks after the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the European Theater announced that McNair was in England and had been named commanding general of the 1st Army Group, an appointment designed to mislead the Germans about the planned thrust of American forces into France.
Characteristically, McNair soon crossed to Normandy to get a front-line view of the action, and particularly of the planned massive aerial bombardment near St. L" that would help break through the German defenses.
On his first day at the front, July 25, 1944, he was killed when American bombs fell short of their targets. Buried in secrecy nearby, his remains were subsequently moved to the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial overlooking "Omaha" invasion beach.
McNair contributed materially in field maneuvers and studies to the streamlining and "triangularization" of the infantry division (a simplified table of organization based on units of three, from squads up to regiments) that would be carried out under his direction four years later. McNair was the highest ranking United States officer killed in action in any American war down to that time. McNair was a modest man who completely immersed himself in the professional tasks of the soldier. He sought neither wealth nor honors, and received none during World War II before his death save honorary degrees from Purdue and the University of Maine. Two oak-leaf clusters were posthumously added to his Distinguished Service Medal, in recognition of his training of the ground combat forces, and in May 1945 the Army War College reservation from which he had directed that training was redesignated Fort Lesley J. McNair. Washington Barracks in Washington, D. C. was renamed Fort Lesley J. McNair in 1948. Roads and buildings on several U. S. Army posts carry the name "McNair", including McNair Avenue and McNair Hall (Fort Sill), McNair Road (Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall), McNair Drive (Fort Monroe), and McNair Hall (Fort Leavenworth). McNair Barracks in Berlin, Germany was named for Lesley J. McNair. The facility was closed as a U. S. military installation in 1994, and has since been redeveloped, but retains a museum which details its use as a U. S. base. McNair Kaserne in Höchst, Germany was also named in his honor. Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5263 in Lawton, Oklahoma is named for him. McNair was inducted into the Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame, which was created in 1969 and is managed by the United States Army Combined Arms Center. The Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame honors soldiers who were stationed at Fort Leavenworth, and significantly contributed to the Army's history, heritage, and traditions. In 2005, McNair was inducted into the U. S. Army's Force Development Hall of Fame.
In organizing American forces for action, General McNair stressed economy and simplicity. He opposed large staffs, keeping his own headquarters notably small; and he tried to strip fighting units down to their essentials in men and equipment. Though an artilleryman, he viewed the infantry as the arm of decisive action; and he opposed the proliferation of specialized units that could not be welded into a combined arms team built around the infantry.
His most serious miscalculation one that violated this principle was his overenthusiastic backing of the mobile "tank destroyer" and of a separate antitank force built around it. In supervising the training of more than three million men, McNair aimed to develop what he called the basic soldierly qualities.
He equated good training with good leadership, labeling it "plain murder" to send soldiers into combat under incompetent officers. He stressed physical fitness, "the first requisite of success in battle, " and a maximum of realism in training, as by the use of live ammunition.
Quotations: "Confidence in one's self, one's leaders, and one's weapons and technical equipment; self-reliance, ingenuity, and initiative; esprit and the will to do the job. "
General McNair was an obscure though highly competent officer, one of the most intellectual of American generals, and a man whom Chief of Staff George C. Marshall (whose friendship McNair had won while serving in the A. E. F. ) could speak of as "the brains of the Army. "
Twelve days after his death, his son Douglas was killed in action on Guam.
On June 15, 1905, McNair married Clare Huster of New York City, whom he had met while at West Point. Their only child, Douglas Crevier McNair, later followed his father to West Point and into the artillery.
