NORTH CAROLINA — After the federal government spent more than $6 million to change the name of Fayetteville’s Army base in 2023, it looks like another name change is coming its way under Trump’s Administration.
READ MORE: Fort Bragg drops Confederate namesake in efforts to be more inclusive
ALSO: Fort Fisher Rec Area undergoes name change, sheds ties to Confederate officer
United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum on Monday, Feb. 10, ordering the name change back to Fort Bragg. This time around, though, he said it’s to honor a decorated World War II veteran, Pfc. Roland L. Bragg.
According to the memorandum, Pfc. Roland L. Bragg earned a Silver Star and Purple Heart for exemplifying bravery during the Battle of the Bulge, which took place in the Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg from December 1944 to January 1945. Bragg served in the 17th Airborne Division and was a paratrooper and mechanic.
The memorandum details that Bragg saved a fellow soldier’s life by “commandeering an enemy ambulance” to transport the “wounded warrior to an allied hospital in Belgium.”
Originally from Maine, Bragg died in 1999 due to cancer.
Fort Bragg originally carried its moniker after Gen. Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general from Warrenton, N.C.
The Army hub was renamed after Congress established a commission in 2021, as part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, to strip Confederate names on military bases. Trump vetoed the bill, but it was overridden by Congress and became law.
“Some Army bases, established in the build-up and during World War I, were named for Confederate officers in an effort to court support from local populations in the South,” according to a then release from the DOD.
Gen. Braxton Bragg was known as “one of the worst generals of the Civil War,” according to the NDAA commission report, losing battles that led to the Confederacy’s downfall.
Located 93 miles west of Wilmington, Fort Bragg is the largest Army base by population and one of nine in the nation to undergo a new moniker in 2023. While other bases were christened after Black soldiers, Fort Liberty was the only one not bestowed after a person who served in the military.
Trump vowed in his campaign bid last fall he would return the Fort Bragg name upon being elected.
“We did win two World Wars from Fort Bragg, right?” he said during a Fayetteville campaign stop. “So this is not a time to be changing names. We’re going to get it back.”
Hegseth, a former Fox News host and Army National Guard officer who served at Bragg, was verbose against the name-change in 2020, saying it was “dead wrong.”
In a video posted Monday on the Pentagon website, after signing the memorandum, Hegseth said: “That’s right. Bragg is back!”
It’s unclear currently how much it will cost to rename the base. The memorandum instructs the Army secretary to “take all steps necessary and appropriate actions to implement this decision in accordance with applicable laws and regulations” and make plans with the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment on “timelines and resource requirements” to see it through.
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