Heget renamed North Carolina Fort Roland L. Brag and signals more change – Las Vegas Sun

Washington – Defense Minister Pete Heget has signed an order to restore the name of a special base for special operations in North Carolina back in Fort Brag and said more changes in the name will be ahead.

Speaking to reporters in Germany, heget hinted at the wholesale of the wider efforts for the Biden administration in 2023 to eliminate names that worship the Confederation leaders, including nine army bases. It creates a potentially expensive, complex and delicate process that can handle the law.

“As the president said, I also said that we are not ready there,” Heget said on Tuesday when he asked him about the decision to return the main name from Fort Liberty back to Fort Brag, but to change the member of the service, make a memory S

Heget said that the original name was a legacy for troops who lived and served there and that it was shameful to change it. He said he deliberately referred to Brag and Fort Bening, the Army Base in Columbus, Georgia, who is now called Fort Moore – when he enters the Pentagon on his first day.

“There are other bases that have been renamed that the same heritage erodes,” he said. “There is a reason to say Brag and Benning when I entered the Pentagon on the first day. But it’s not just Brag and Benning. There are many other members of the service who have connections. And we will do our best to restore it. “

The base of North Carolina was renamed Fort Liberty in 2023. His original namesake, General Braxton Brag, was a general of the Confederation from Warnton, North Carolina, who was known for having slaves and losing key battles for a civil war, contributing to It drops to the Confederation.

Heget renamed the base in honor of PFC. Roland L. Brag, whom the army said he was a World War II hero who won a silver star and a purple heart for exceptional courage during the Battle of the Blut.

The election of the private first class of World War II surrounded a law forbidding the military to name a base after the Confederation leader. It creates the potential of the Ministry of Defense to do the same for the other eight army bases that were renamed – search through massive military records for members of the service with the same surnames that could be cited to return to previous names.

The action of heget has attracted some opposition from Congress. Senator Jack Reed, Dr.I., called it a “cynical maneuver”, which violates the spirit of the law and reflects “President Donald Trump’s obsession with the fight against cultural wars” instead of supporting the troops and their families.

“The worse is that he offended the Gold Star families, who proudly supported the name of Fort Liberty, and was thrown away by associating the good name of Private Bragg with a traitor of the Confederation,” says Reed, the ranking of the Democrat on the Committee For armed services of the Senate, in a statement.

Changing the name back to Bragg can also be seen as a slap against some of the highly decorated members of the service whose names are now used for the basics. Former Fort Gordon in Georgia, for example, was renamed Fort Eisenhower to mark President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led the Allied Forces in Europe in World War II.

Fort Moore is named after Lieutenant -General Harold Gregory Moore, Jr., who won the distinctive service cross for valor and fights in the battle of Ea Drang in the Vietnam War.

Army officials said they still had no estimates of the cost of changing the name of Fort Brag.

On Tuesday, the army launched an initial check of the Bragg Service, who was born on Webster, Maine, and served as a toxic gas manipulator from July 1943 to November 1945. Bragg was located in England from August 1944 to August 1945 .

The Bragg Awards include a World War II victory medal, the Silver Star Medal, a Purple Heart Medal, a Medal for Army Good Behavior, a European African Campaign Medal in the Middle East with three bronze stars, a parachute badge and badge For a fighting infantry, Shaw said.

In a video posted on X, which announces the renaming, Heget said: “That’s right. Brag is back! “

In fact, the base was still widely known as Bragg, the new name didn’t really get caught.

The renaming will add costs when the Trump administration is trying to find savings through the Elon Musk Ministry of Government.

The 2022 renaming Commission considered that the renaming of BRAGG, including all signs, job painting in police vehicles and emergency realizations and other items, would cost at least $ 6.3 million. In 2023, the base said the total cost would be about $ 8 million.