The New Names for Glory

The big scoop — and it’s a good one — uncovered in the report of the commission on names for our military bases is that there really are a lot of American heroes who are well worth commemorating via our military forts, bases, and arsenals. The commission suggests, say, replacing the name of Fort Benning with Fort Moore, after the Vietnam war heroes Lieutenant General Hal Moore and his wife Julia.It’s not our intention here to resolve the question of whether the bases ought to be renamed to expunge the Civil War figures. We could argue that round, or we could argue that flat, as the late editor of the Wall Street Journal, Robert Bartley, used to say in respect of a close call. The honorees the commission has come up with, though, are so admirable that it’s hard not to savor the idea of giving to these installations new names.One of them is Sergeant William Henry Johnson, after whom the commission would rename Fort Polk, in Louisiana. Leonidas Polk himself was a clergyman turned Confederate general, known as the “fighting bishop,” and one with a decidedly mixed military record but widely loved by his rebel troops. He fell to artillery fire directed during the Atlanta campaign by no less than Major General William Tecumseh Sherman.As a war hero, though, Sergeant Johnson is unalloyed. Early in World War I, he was barred from combat positions because he was an African American. So he was pulling guard duty under the French when he was found by Glory in the Argonne. His position, as the base-naming commission tells the story, was attacked at 2 a.m. by a German raid. Johnson was almost immediately wounded by a grenade.Johnson first sounded an alarm and then turned “single handedly” to face the Germans, exhausting his grenades and bullets before charging the enemy by swinging his rifle as a club. And then, to prevent the enemy from removing his wounded buddy, Johnson unsheathed his bolo knife. He engaged two dozen men that night, killing at least four. He himself sustained 21 separate wounds in hand-to-hand combat.He emerged as America’s first hero of the Great War. Back home, after being “paraded through New York City,” Johnson was denied the same benefits as white soldiers. Unable to work because of his wounds, he “died destitute” in 1929. After being buried with military honors at Arlington, Johnson “faded from major memory for most of a century.” In 2015, Johnson was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.What better place to bear Johnson’s glorious name than a major installation like Fort Polk. His is only one of the riveting stories brought to life by the base-naming commission. They include the only woman to have been awarded the Medal of Honor, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a battlefield physician in the Civil War of spectacular grit and courage. The commission would rename Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, as Fort Walker.In proposing to rename Fort Benning Fort Moore, the naming commission made a brilliant suggestion in sharing the honor between General Moore and his wife Julia, who was at home when her heroic husband was in the Ia Drang Valley, leading his men in the first major combat of the Vietnam war. Mel Gibson’s magnificent movie of the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young” recounts Mrs. Moore’s role.As the battle raged in the Ia Drang, the notifications of those killed in action were sent by telegrams and delivered by taxis. The movie depicts Mrs. Moore at home, when in the gloam, she sees a taxi stop in front of the house. The driver gets out carrying a telegram and comes to her door. She begins to pray, only to discover that the driver is seeking the address of a different family whose father had fallen.Mrs. Moore then delivers the telegram herself, asks the cab company to deliver future telegrams to her, and organizes the wives to deliver the grim notices and comfort the widows. It’s an extraordinarily affecting story. Her work, the re-naming commission notes, led to the creation of casualty notification teams in use today. War turns out to hand up all kinds of heroes. It’s an honor for the rest of us to try to keep up with them.

The New Names for Glory

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