The base’s name was changed to Fort Moore in 2023 as part of a bipartisan effort to eliminate military honors bestowed on Confederate officers.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continued his efforts to revive the Confederate names of military bases, announcing on Monday that he is re-renaming Fort Moore, whose previous name honored the confederate general Henry Benning.
The base, which is in Georgia, will again be called Fort Benning.
The base’s name was changed in 2023 as part of a wider bipartisan effort to eliminate military honors bestowed on Confederate officers who rebelled against the Union during the Civil War. Mr. Hegseth views those changes as part of a “woke” culture and wants to return the bases back to their old names.
Current law does not let him do that — the military is no longer allowed to name bases after Confederate generals — so Mr. Hegseth has found other military troops with the same last names.
Last month, he announced that Fort Liberty in North Carolina would return to the name Fort Bragg, but in honor of an enlisted Army soldier named Roland L. Bragg, who fought in World War II, and not the Confederate general Braxton Bragg.
On Monday, it was Fort Moore’s turn.
“I direct the U.S. Army to change the name of Fort Moore, Georgia, to Fort Benning, Georgia, in honor of Corporal (CPL) Fred G. Benning, who served with extraordinary heroism during World War I with the United States Army, and in recognition of the installation’s storied history of service to the United States of America,” Mr. Hegseth said in a statement.
Corporal Benning, he said, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his “extraordinary heroism” on the battlefield in France in 1918, for leading his company through heavy fire to its assigned objective in support of the Meuse-Argonne offensive.