Picture Courtesy of Garry Thompson

Brigadier General N.B. Forrest, III, U.S. Army Air Force, was born in Memphis on April 7,1905, and was the first American General Officer killed in combat against the Nazis during World War II. He died while participating in a B-17 bomber raid on Kiel, Germany, June 13, 1943.

A 1928 graduate of West Point, he served as Second Air Force Chief of Staff prior to transfer to the U.S. Eighth Air Force in England. He was the son of Memphians Nathan Bedford Forrest II and Mattie Patton Forrest, and great-grandson of Confederate Lt. General Nathan Bedford Forrest. In 1949 his body was returned from Germany and reburied in Arlington National Cemetery.

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