Army Was Reviewing More Than Confederate Base Names, Officials Reveal – By Katie Bo Williams (Defense One) / July 8 2020
Among the potential friction points eyed were Army National Guard units with nicknames honoring Confederate leaders.
When President Donald Trump told U.S. Army leaders in June not to remove Confederate names from bases, he also effectively halted an Army effort to create and implement a policy on divisiveness in the ranks far broader than a simple ban on the display of the Stars and Bars on military property.
Rather than targeting just the flag or the base names, the idea was to take a commission-style approach that would look at anything that might be divisive and address not only the symbol, but the cultural forces behind it. The expectation and hope was that as the review progressed, other long-buried issues would become apparent.
The Army, as the oldest and largest of the service branches, has become a focal point of the bitter national debate over Confederate symbology in the military, in part because it is the only service branch with 10 major bases named for Confederate generals and one colonel.
Among the potential friction points that arose during brainstorming sessions were Army National Guard units with nicknames honoring Confederate leaders, according to two defense officials. There are at least two: The Kentucky Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 623rd Field Artillery is nicknamed “Morgan’s Men” after Gen. John Hunt Morgan, a Confederate general famous for an 1863 raid into a handful of border states that was supposed to draw Union forces away from the Vicksburg and Gettysburg Campaigns. (The raid was ultimately deemed a failure.) In Virginia, the storied 29th Infantry regiment known as “the Blue and Gray Division” is based at Fort Belvoir, outside of Washington, D.C.— an homage to the gray uniforms of the Confederacy.
Continue to article: https://www.defenseone.com/politics/2020/07/army-was-reviewing-more-confederate-base-names-officials-reveal/166730/?oref=d-topstory
