Less than two years after Fort Bragg officially became Fort Liberty, the North Carolina Army base’s name is changing back to Fort Bragg.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered Army officials Monday to change the name. But it’s not the same soldier for whom the base was initially named.
Instead of renaming the base after Gen. Braxton Bragg, the native North Carolinian and Confederate leader who the base had been named after in 1918, Hegseth said Monday night the installation would be named after Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a soldier who was assigned to the 18th Airborne Corps at the base and served during World War II.
“Bragg is back,” Hegseth said in a video posted on social media after signing a memorandum directing the Army to take steps to rename the base, while on board a C-17 en route to Stuttgart, Germany.
Roland Bragg, who was born in Sabattus, Maine, earned a Silver Star for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity,” and a Purple Heart “for wounds sustained,” during the Battle of the Bulge, according to the memo ordering the base’s name change.
During the battle, Bragg saved another soldier’s life “by commandeering an enemy ambulance and driving it 20 miles to transport a fellow wounded warrior to an allied hospital in Belgium,” the memo states.
Bragg returned to Maine after the war. He died in 1999 in Nobleboro.
Trump campaigned for name change
The Trump administration was expected to move to rename Fort Liberty after President Donald Trump criticized the renaming of Fort Bragg on the campaign trail last year and vowed during a rally in Fayetteville to restore the installation’s name.
In the memo, Hegseth said that Fort Bragg, which was originally named Camp Bragg, has been home to tens of thousands of soldiers who have trained and deployed from the installation to “crises and conflicts around the world in defense of our nation.”
“Fort Bragg has a long and proud history of equipping, training, and preparing our Soldiers to fight and prevail in any operational environment,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth said his directive to rename the base “honors the personal courage and selfless service of all those who have trained to fight and win our nation’s wars, including Pfc. Bragg, and is in keeping with the installation’s esteemed and storied history.”
The memo directs the secretary of the Army to “take all steps necessary and appropriate actions to implement this decision in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.” It orders the Army to advise the Department of Defense of its plan for implementation, including “timelines and resource requirements.”
History of Fort Bragg name change
Fort Bragg was renamed Fort Liberty in 2023, after a commission established by Congress to rename military installations named after Confederate leaders recommended changing the name of the installation and eight others.
Army officials were “exploring legal ways to change the base’s name without violating the law that bans the use of confederate names,” NBC News reported Friday.
The news outlet reported officials were considering Roland Bragg as an option.
The commission that recommended the name change to Fort Liberty had also considered naming the base after another soldier named Bragg, NBC News reported.
Story by Avi Bajpai, The Charlotte Observer.
