I see that Fort Polk was renamed Fort Johnson last week, to placate those who are still enraged that we fought a Civil War.
Sergeant Johnston was a World War I soldier who served in France. His wiki page is here. His regiment saw combat in the Argonne Forest and Johnson was one of the first American soldiers to be awarded the French Croix de Guerre avec Palm. He returned to the United States after the war and resumed civilian life.
Johnson was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart in 1996 and the Distinguished Service Cross in 2002. Johnson's battlefield citation reflects great courage and valor in the face of overwhelming enemy fire. His actions on the field that day reflect great credit on himself and his unit. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2015.
There is no doubt that William Henry Johnson was a great American who displayed extreme valor on a foreign battlefield. He certainly deserves the thanks from a grateful nation. Perhaps the renaming of Ford Polk in his honor will tend to salve some of the wounds that seem to affect a portion of our nation.
Fort Johnson is the home of the Joint Readiness Training Center and hosts the 3rd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division.
6 comments:
The eradication of everything associated with the Confederacy is insane. The invalidation of nearly anyone who owned a slave is infantile, when such a thing was legal everywhere at that time and before.
The world of 1860 was so different from ours that none of us can even begin to comprehend it. The agrarian aristocratic South was incomprehensible to the industrialized North even then. And if now, we can't understand it in even shallow depth, then who are we to condemn it for a single aspect of their world?
Had they not shot first, would hostilities have ever happened? What if they had just shunned the federals in this fort or that one? Cut off direct trade with the North? Would that horrid institution have died a natural death in a few years anyway? One big plague of boll weevils would have dethroned King Cotton. Had they listened to the mythical Rhett Butler and spent a couple years building infrastructure and a few factories and foundries, stockpiling gear, building ships, etc, things could have been very different. Especially as they had been thinking about breaking away since around the 3/5 Compromise, and thinking about that ever more as the various Tariffs were laid on them.
But my real point is that they were us too. Still Americans. And the post-conflict official acts of reconciliation and forgiveness recognized that. The memory holing and destruction is dishonest madness.
My opinion, this is a ridiculous waste of money. Old vets will remember it as Fort Polk, same with other bases...
The best way not to learn from your mistakes is to forget them.
Fort Johnson. Johnson? Can we get a thread for the jokes?
Winner winner chicken dinner!!!
Its about erasing rhe history of the nation, has nothing to do with reparations or righting perceived wrongs. Its about destroying the culture, so they can inject a new one.
I wonder if the locals around any of these bases will refuse to change the signs pointing to them?
If I lived around one, I would.
Here in Virginia, they have spent tons of money changing signage around Fort Lee and Fort Pickett.
It's no telling the total cost for renaming bases across the country.
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