By May 1945, Lester Leggett had seen his fair share of combat. As a member of the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion, an element of the 36th Infantry Division, the grizzled GI had fought all the way up the Italian Peninsula and into southern France. Along the way he was wounded by shell fragments, buzzed by a pair of Messerschmitt Me-109s in farm country, ran headlong into a German convoy in woods and tumbled down a steep mountain embankment when the road gave way under his jeep. Still, it was an unexpected mission to seize Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring in the days immediately after the shooting stopped that he remembers as among his most tense and potentially hazardous. In an interview with David Lesjak, Leggett shares his memories of the raid to bag the bigwig and the controversy over his capture that lingers to this day.
World War II: Where were you when you received word the war was over?
Leggett: My reconnaissance platoon was six miles south of Bad Tölz, where we had earlier fired at a German convoy traversing a road at a higher elevation. The night of May 5 we were out of the vehicles walking on gravel trying not to make any noise. As we were walking, the radio came on and said: ‘All companies. German Army Group G has surrendered effective 1200, 06 May 1945. All units halt in place. Do not fire unless fired upon.’ We were stunned. We made a radio transmission asking if we could come on in. They said affirmative; so we turned the lights on and drove in to Kufstein.
