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After 81 Years, Fort Hood Has Finally Been Renamed After an Actual American Hero
It should have happened long ago
It’s been nearly a year since I published a story about a congressional commission proposing new names for nine U.S. Army bases originally named after Confederate Army generals. If you don’t pay attention to the names of Army bases or aren’t from the United States, you might think that sentence was utter nonsense; surely the United States would never name military installations after men who literally rebelled against the nation and fought against the Union soldiers who wanted to preserve that nation.
Welcome to America, where we’ve been doing ridiculous things since 1776.
As insane as it seems, Army bases were indeed named after men who were, no matter how Lost Cause adherents want to spin it, traitors. It is a shameful fact of our history that there was a time when people believed this was a fine idea. As I said in the earlier piece, naming bases housing soldiers of the United States Army after men who led a rebellion against the United States is as crazy as the British naming forts after George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.
Just as hard to fathom is that it has taken 81 years to correct this grievous error. Camp Hood was established in 1942 and renamed Fort Hood in 1950, an…
