UNBELIEVABLE: Statue vandals seem to have mistaken WWII hero for Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee!
A white marble monument of U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William C. Lee, who commanded the 101st Airborne Division's "Screaming Eagles" during World War II, was doused with flammable liquid and set on fire last week, museum officials said. The statue bears black scorch marks running up its left side. The suspects seem to have confused Lee with Gen. Robert E. Lee, who led the Confederate army during the Civil War some 80 years earlier, officials said. “I was surprised that anybody would do that to this museum statue,” Mark Johnson, curator of the General William C. Lee Airborne Museum in Dunn, told Goldsboro's WNCN-TV. “This is not a Civil War museum and this is not Robert E. Lee.” Aside from their last name, the two Lees have nothing in common, according to Johnson. The former Lee was known as the father of the U.S. Airborne Army and an international war hero of World War II, he told the station. Aquí hay más de CBS 17: The controversy surrounding Confe