Fort Benning, Georgia was officially designated as Fort Moore on Thursday, becoming the fifth Army installation to change its namesake from that of a Confederate general. As the traditional home of the Army’s Infantry branch – and since 2011 the Armor branch, – as well as one of the Army’s largest Basic Combat Training centers, it’s one of the service’s most storied bases.
Uniquely among US military bases, the name honors a married couple, Lt. Gen. Harold J. “Hal” Moore and Julie Moore.
Moore was a celebrated infantry officer who served in Korea and Vietnam, and whose career is widely known in infantry circles through his battlefield memoir, We Were Soldiers Once… And Young. A movie based on the book featured Mel Gibson as Moore. The book covers Moore’s command in November 1965 of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment during the Battle of Ia Drang.
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