I’m a Proud Army Veteran. We Should Remove Confederate Names From Army Posts.
Veterans have identified a number of heroes far more deserving of veneration than these Confederate icons
As both a soldier and an airman, I spent much of my time in the military at the “rebel forts” — the 10 U.S. Army posts that were named after Confederate generals. As a young recruit from Texas in the late ’90s, I attended infantry school at Fort Benning, Georgia. It is named after Confederate Gen. Henry Benning, who commanded the 17th Georgia Infantry under Robert E. Lee. I later deployed to the Army’s Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, Louisiana, which honors Gen. Leonidas Polk, a reverend-turned-soldier who enjoyed little success on the battlefield due to his inexperience and was killed in action during the Atlanta Campaign.
I was once tasked with a special duty assignment that involved acting as chauffeur to my squad leader who had been ordered to remove a racist tattoo from his arm. Ironically, the removal took place at Fort Gordon in Georgia, named after John Brown Gordon, who joined the Confederate Army as a captain in the 6th Alabama Infantry Regiment despite having no military experience.
