All Army installations that were renamed in recent years to sever ties with the Confederacy will have their original names restored, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday.
“We won a lot of battles out of those forts. It’s no time to change, and I’m superstitious — we want to keep it going,” Trump told a crowd of uniformed service members during a speech at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Nine Army posts including Fort Benning, Fort Hood and Fort Gordon shed their Confederate names in 2023 following an independent review ordered by Congress. Most were rechristened to honor American war heroes and other legendary figures of Army lore.
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Fort A.P. Hill, for instance, was renamed after Mary Edwards Walker, a Union Army surgeon and the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor. Fort Moore was named after Vietnam War legend Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and his wife Julia, a prominent advocate for military families.
Fort Liberty was not given a namesake amid infighting between senior Army officials over whether it should be named after a paratrooper or Special Forces soldier.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the base to revert back to Fort Bragg and Fort Moore to return to its previous identity as Fort Benning during the early days of the Trump administration. Both had previously been named after figures who fought with the slaveholding South during the Civil War.
Hegseth and the Pentagon reversed the earlier work of Congress and the military aimed at scrapping names honoring the Confederacy but have sought out names of other service members that match those of the Civil War-era figures as replacements.
Earlier this month, Hegseth also ordered the Navy to strip the name of gay rights icon Harvey Milk, who served as a diving officer on the submarine rescue ship USS Kittiwake during the Korean War, from one of its ships. The service is also reportedly considering renaming other ships, including the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and USNS Harriet Tubman.
Below are the new names for Army bases and reasons for the selection, according to the service. Military.com has not verified all of these anecdotes.
- Fort Pickett, previously renamed Fort Barfoot, will now recognize 1st Lt. Vernon W. Pickett, a Distinguished Service Cross recipient for heroism in World War II. According to the Army, Pickett destroyed two enemy machine gun nests with grenades while under fire and later escaped from a prisoner-of-war transport train before being killed in action.
- Fort Hood, previously Fort Cavazos, will honor Col. Robert B. Hood, an artillery officer who in World War I directed fire amid intense shelling and reorganized his unit under machine-gun fire near Thiaucourt, France.
- Fort Gordon, previously renamed Fort Eisenhower, will now commemorate Master Sgt. Gary I. Gordon, the Medal of Honor recipient whose sacrifice during the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu was memorialized in “Black Hawk Down.” Gordon volunteered to defend downed pilots and held off overwhelming enemy forces until he ran out of ammunition.
- Fort Lee, which was renamed Fort Gregg-Adams, will revert to its name while honoring Pvt. Fitz Lee, a Medal of Honor recipient from the Spanish-American War who rescued wounded service members under direct fire during a coastal assault in Cuba.
- Fort Polk, which had carried the name Fort Johnson, will now celebrate Gen. James H. Polk, a Silver Star recipient and former commander of U.S. Army Europe, who led mechanized cavalry operations in World War II.
- Fort Rucker, renamed Fort Novosel, will instead honor Capt. Edward W. Rucker, a World War I aviator awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for engaging superior enemy forces deep behind lines in France.
- Finally, Fort Anderson-Pinn-Hill, formerly Fort Walker, will now bear the names of three Civil War Medal of Honor recipients: Lt. Col. Edward Hill, 1st Sgt. Robert A. Pinn, and Pvt. Bruce Anderson. Each was recognized for extraordinary heroism in separate engagements supporting the Union Army.
Related: Hegseth Orders Navy to Strip Name of Gay Rights Icon Harvey Milk from Ship
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