William Carey Lee was born on March 12, 1895, in the small Harnett County town of Dunn to hardware merchant Eldrege Lee and his wife, Emma. Bill, as he was known, excelled in both football and baseball in high school and college. He attended Wake Forest College (now Wake Forest University), then transferred to North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now North Carolina State University) in 1915 to enter the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program.
Lee received a reserve commission as a second lieutenant. He was sent to the battlefields of France in June 1918 shortly after marrying his high school sweetheart, Dava Johnson. There he served as a combat officer until the signing of the armistice on November 11, 1918. He was then stationed in Germany as part of the occupation forces until his return to the United States in the early 1920s.
From 1922 until 1926, Bill Lee was an ROTC instructor at North Carolina State. (Lee held a deep love for the school and returned in the 1930s to complete his degree in education.) Following this assignment, he embarked on tours of duty in Panama, the United States, and Europe.
While he was in Europe, Lee noticed that paratrooper and glider units were forming in the German military. He immediately grasped the strategic importance of air-dropping troops behind enemy lines and the vital role it could play in battlefield victory. For the remainder of his military career, he advocated and then oversaw the development of the United States Army’s airborne forces.
In June 1940 Lee was assigned to organize a platoon of paratroopers to explore the feasibility of an airborne force. Following the success of that platoon, he was charged with commanding the Provisional Parachute Group at Fort Benning, Georgia. With its four two-hundred-foot-high jump towers and other training aids, the base became the army’s training site for a six-week paratrooper jump school. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Lee lobbied for a larger command to train airborne forces. Consequently, a new unit, the United States Airborne Command, was established at Fort Bragg with newly promoted Brigadier General William C. Lee as its commander.
Lee, right, discusses American parachute techniques with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall at Camp Jackson, South Carolina, in June 1942. Churchill went to Fort Jackson to observe Fort Bragg's 503D Parachute Infantry Regiment make a mass jump. U.S. Army photo.
In the summer of 1942, Lee traveled to England to meet with General Dwight D. Eisenhower and other American and Allied officers to plan the airborne’s role in the coming invasion of Europe. As adviser, he suggested that America’s airborne forces be organized into larger self-contained divisions. On August 15, 1942, the army activated its first two airborne divisions, the 82nd and 101st, for service in Europe. Lee was promoted to major general and placed in command of the 101st Airborne Division. Following its organization, Lee went back to England to await the division’s arrival in January 1943. There, both Lee and the division planned and trained for their roles in the upcoming invasion of Normandy.
On February 5, 1944, four months before that invasion, Major General William C. Lee suffered a heart attack that ended his military career. But on the night of June 5 and the early morning of June 6, 1944, the paratroopers of the 101st honored their former commander by shouting “Bill Lee!” as they exited their planes over Normandy.
Lee retired from military service in December 1944 after suffering a second heart attack. He returned with his wife to their Dunn home, where he became active in civic affairs. He died on June 25, 1948, and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Dunn following a military funeral attended by hundreds.
In 1964 North Carolina State University honored General Lee by naming a new dormitory after him. In 1976 a statue of Lee in military uniform was erected in his hometown. Today his former home at 209 West Divine Street in Dunn is operated as the General William C. Lee Airborne Museum, and Lee is remembered in United States Army history as “Father of the Airborne.”