Lieutenant General Withers Alexander Burress (November 24, 1894 – June 13, 1977) was United States Army officer who was a graduate and commandant of the Virginia Military Institute as well as a combat commander in World War I and World War II. Early life and military career Burress was born in Richmond, Virginia, on November 24, 1894, to John Woodfin Burress and Susan Chinn Withers, the latter a collateral descendant of Sir Walter Scott. He attended and graduated from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in 1914. On November 30, 1916, he was commissioned a second lieutenant into the Infantry Branch of the United States Army. The American entry into World War I on April 6, 1917, saw him posted to the 23rd Infantry Regiment, which later became part of the newly created 2nd Infantry Division. Burress saw combat on the Western Front with the regiment as a regimental operations officer, serving in nearly all of the division's major engagements. On November 2, 1919, a year after the war ended on November 11, 1918, he returned to the United States with the permanent rank of captain. Between the wars Burress attended the United States Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, the United States Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the United States Army War College at Washington Barracks in Washington, D.C. From 1935 to 1940, Burress was a professor of military science and served as commandant of the Virginia Military Institute. In 1940, he was assigned to the War Department General Staff in Washington, D.C. World War II In 1941, with the United States entrance into World War II, Burress had returned to Fort Benning as Assistant Commandant of the United States Army Infantry School. In early 1942, he was assigned to the Puerto Rican Department. He was given command of the 100th Infantry Division upon its mobilization at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in November 1942. Burress continued in his command, taking the division to France in October 1944. As part of the Seventh United States Army's VI Corps, the division went into combat in the Vosges Mountains of northeastern France then through the Rhineland, Ardennes, and Central European campaigns until November 1945, making Burress one of eleven generals to command one of the United States Army's 90 divisions from mobilization to the end of the war. On September 22, 1945, he was promoted to