Cookeville Vet Remembers VE Day

“We were so jubilant and happy about it, we were jumping up and down.”

100-year old Lehman Riggs of Cookeville remembering Victory in Europe, 75 years ago Friday.

“I was in the second infantry division, and we were the furthest inland of any American division in Europe whenever the war ended,” Riggs said. “And we were selected to be one of the first to come home to the states, not knowing our future or what they had planned for us. And after we got home and the war ended while we were in the states we were told then that we were scheduled to hit Tokyo Beach in October of that year, and they had brought us home especially for a special training for that invasion.”

That invasion would not happen. President Harry Truman decided to use two atomic bombs against Japan. Truman and his commanders, fearful of the American death toll in an invasion. Just two weeks earlier… Riggs had been fighting the Nazis in Leipzig, Germany.

“The city was divided in half by a huge man-made canal,” Riggs said. “There was a bridge across the canal. We had taken half of the city and they had locked all of the bridges with anything they could find that would obstruct our entrance there. Street cars, burned out tanks, huge rock piles. We were forbidden to cross. They were holding us up there and they were dug in, in a small park, not too far from there. And we had orders to go up to the third floor of this apartment building, and give overhead fire to try to pin the enemy down until our troops could get across the bridge. And it was there that a sniper got my buddy. I was within two feet of him.”

A Life Magazine photographer was embedded with Riggs’ infantry regiment. He took a picture of Riggs and Robert Bowman, the man killed, just seconds before the shot. Then, the photographer took the photo of Bowman’s body. Both pictures appeared in the May 14, 1945 edition of Life Magazine with the caption “Last Man To Die.”

“Picture was in Life Magazine when he had taken those pictures,” Riggs said. “So, in fact, I didn’t see the pictures until I got back from overseas.”

Riggs said most believed other Americans had died in the closing days of the European conflict. But the picture took on a life of its own, appearing for decades to come as a symbol that the war ended in the European theater.

Did Riggs understand at the time that victory would soon come to the allied forces?

“No, we had no idea,” Riggs said. “Of course I was just a regular soldier, and I had no information at all. All we knew was what our commanding officers told us.”

The picture did not identify Lehman Riggs. His identity had been a mystery until 2012 when the story came to the surface as Leipzig recognized its community’s role in the final days of World War II. Riggs would go back to Leipzig twice since 2012. The building where the two men shared that fateful moment captured on film, was restored. And the street where it sits, was named after Lehman Riggs’ friend.

Now, 75 years later, Tennessee’s oldest living World War II veteran understands the importance of VE Day.

“To me it’s indescribable because we were so elated in every respect,” Riggs said. “We knew that we had a new life in front of us and we had to make new decisions. So naturally, we were exuberant.”