FORT BRAGG — Disabled veteran Mike Lee, who served at Fort Bragg over 30 years ago, drove from Dunn on Friday morning to watch as the Army post’s leaders ceremonially replaced the Fort Liberty flag with the Fort Bragg flag.
For more than 100 years, the country’s biggest military installation by population carried the name Bragg in honor of Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general and slaveholder. In 2023, the installation was rechristened Fort Liberty. This was part of an effort by the U.S. Department of Defense to obey a 2021 federal law to remove the names of Confederate leaders from America’s military bases.
Then, a little less than a month ago, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the Fort Bragg name restored. It’s a change Lee and his friends were happy with, Lee said.
“When they changed it back, we were so excited. We really felt like we were getting our heritage and our culture back,” said Lee, who served six years in the Army and was medically discharged as a sergeant after he was injured in the Gulf War during 1991’s Operation Desert Storm.
Several hundred soldiers and civilians gathered for the redesignation ceremony at 11 a.m. Friday in front of the headquarters of the 18th Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg. The crowd included family members of former Pfc. Roland L. Bragg of Maine, the former Fort Bragg soldier for whom the post is now officially named.
Betrayals
From 1918 to 2023, Fort Bragg was named in honor of another former soldier named Bragg: Braxton Bragg. He fought for the United States in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War. A slave owner, he fought against the United States Army as a general for the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War.
Despite Braxton Bragg’s betrayal of his country in 1861 and enslavement of people, the United States named its new Army camp near Fayetteville in his honor in 1918.
Because of Braxton Bragg’s betrayal of his country and active participation in slavery, the United States removed his name from its largest Army post in 2023.
Lee said he and other Bragg veterans felt “somewhat betrayed by the whole ordeal” when the name changed from Bragg to Liberty. “Because we served our time here, and we were proud to be part of Bragg, and the culture, and what have you,” he said.
Nobody knew who Braxton Bragg was, he said. “It just wasn’t a factor.” The name “Bragg” applied to his and his fellow soldiers’ service, he said, not to Braxton Bragg.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress passed a law in 2021 that ordered the removal of Confederate names from nine military bases and other military assets. Their law — enacted despite a veto from President Donald Trump — followed years of protests about America’s display of Confederate monuments, and was part of America’s racial reckoning and protests of 2020 after a police officer killed George Floyd, a Black man, during an arrest.
Community leaders and the military considered the names of hundreds of Fort Bragg soldiers who served with valor before deciding on the name Fort Liberty. It came at the suggestion of a Gold Star mother — a woman whose son had died for his country — CityView previously reported.
“My son didn’t die for Bragg,” she said. “My son died for liberty.”
In 2023, the Army said the name change to Fort Liberty cost $8 million, The Associated Press reported then. The cost to revert back to Fort Bragg is estimated at less than $1 million, The New York Times said.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation spent $163,000 to change street and highway signs from “Fort Bragg” to “Fort Liberty” in 2023.
A new Fort Bragg
Now, Roland Bragg’s name is on the post.
“Fort Bragg is a place where ordinary people transform into heroes. Ordinary people like Pfc. Roland L. Bragg,” said Lt. General Gregory K. Anderson, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg, in a speech during Friday’s ceremony.
Roland L. Bragg joined the Army in July 1943, trained at Fort Bragg and went to the war in Europe. In January 1945 he fought against Nazi forces in the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium.
Roland Bragg was wounded and captured with four other paratroopers, Anderson said.
“They somehow convinced the German guard to let the prisoners go,” Anderson said, so long as Roland Bragg knocked him unconscious with a rifle to simulate a struggle.
Roland Bragg stole a German ambulance, loaded wounded American soldiers into the the back, and drove for the American lines, Bragg’s youngest daughter, Diane Watts, told reporters on Friday.
“The Germans knew it was stolen, so they’re shooting at him. And the Americans see a German ambulance coming, so they’re shooting at him,” Watts said.
The incoming fire hit the ambulance, but Bragg made it to a hospital.
“The first thing he asked was: How many people did he save,” Watts said. “And he was told everybody in the ambulance died.”
The Army awarded Roland Bragg a Silver Star for his effort, Anderson said. “The third highest decoration for valor in combat. He was a hero,” he said. Bragg also received a Purple Heart because he was wounded.
Fifty years later, Watts said, a man from California contacted Roland Bragg. The man had been in the same ambulance and survived, she said.
“My grandfather had spent his entire life thinking everyone in the back of that ambulance had died,” Roland Bragg’s granddaughter, Rebecca Amirpour, said during Friday’s ceremony. “And I feel like it was a tremendous gift for him to learn that someone had survived. And it was a true blessing.”
The politics of a name
Political controversy surrounded the renaming of Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty, and back again to Bragg.
Critics called it “woke” to remove from American military bases the names of people who made war against the U.S. military and participated in slavery. It became one of the many culture war points that fired up people on the political rightwing.
Trump made the name changes a campaign issue as he ran for reelection in 2024. He promised to return the name “Bragg” to the Fayetteville Army post.
On Feb. 10, Trump’s defense secretary fulfilled that promise with Roland L. Bragg.
After the war ended, Roland Bragg returned to Maine, got married, operated small businesses and raised three daughters. He died in 1999 at age 75.
“I think he would be very, very honored,” to know Fort Bragg was named for him, Watts said. When people hear the name Bragg, “I’d like them to know that he was a very humble man, but an honorable man.”
A reporter asked Watts what she would say if someone said her family was being treated as a political pawn in the controversy about the Fort Liberty-Fort Bragg name change.
“I don’t think that’s the case, I really don’t,” Watts said. “I think that they looked for a man of good character, and they found my dad.”
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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Sadly, this redesignation has trained the name and the heroic service of a good man for political gain. It will forever be enshrined in controversy because of those who wishes undercover to keep the last name a traitor alive. All for “heritage” sake.
What was wrong with “Liberty?” Isn’t it what we all have served proudly to defend. Unfortunately, hatred for the freedoms we all should enjoy is believed by a minute few.
Liberty losses.