2-11-25

I don’t know if you heard the news but the warrior factory is back!.....the warrior

factory, that place where they take raw materials in the form of America’s best

and brightest young men and women and turn them into warfighters, soldiers,

paratroopers, Green Berets….I’m talking about Fort Bragg, North

Carolina….Fort Bragg which for over 100 years was called Fort Bragg and no

one knew….but they all liked the name….if you’ve served there, if you’ve

mobilized for war there, if you’ve jumped out of airplanes, swung low over

treetops with the doors open, or fired artillery on the range there, you just told

folks you were “stationed at Bragg”…..but a few years ago, in what had to have

been one of the most awful and overplayed round of virtue signaling Fort Bragg

became Fort Liberty because someone on high felt sure that widdle biddy

feelings might get hurt if anyone knew that Fort Bragg was named for a former

Confederate General over a century ago……to be honest, I have yet to meet any

old soldier who likes the name change….not one….of all stripes and ranks, of all

creeds and colors, I don’t know a single soldier who spent time at Bragg who

was offended by the name, or who liked the new name….not a single one of us

ever cared about the name, but we by-God cared when they took it away….it

became an insult….stripping the name away was like being told that everyone of

us who passed through the gates, jumped on the DZ, or cleaned latrines in the

barracks, were somehow complicit in a mass systemic racism….when they

changed the name they didn’t just change the sign….they slapped every Fort

Bragg veteran in the face and told them to wise up and quit being a bunch of

racist extremists……but….

In one of those chess-vs-checkers-moves the longstanding home of the 82nd

Airborne, the Special Warfare Center, Army Special Forces, Civil Affairs and

Psyops, Delta Force, and the Joint Special Operations Command .....the home of

warriors.....got it's name back. In a classic end around the post is not named for

Confederate General Braxton Bragg.......nope. it's now named for Roland Bragg, a

US Army hero of WWII who earned the Silver Star at the Battle of the Bulge. He

was a Private.

Why is this important? 1. Because it's about legacy. Millions of warfighters came

thru Bragg and served ably. Every one of them has had to caveat their memories

the last few years with a hyphenated description of where they served.

2. It's a sign to the world that our military is not filled with those who whimper and

simper and wring their hands about mean names that someone said could trigger

their little bitty emotions. We are warfighters. We are stronger than our

circumstances.

3. Let's be honest...."Fort Liberty" was a silly name. It sounded like someone had a

name-the-post contest at a local elementary school and the third grader won.

4. It shows that we have a leadership right now that could care less about virtue

signaling. The extreme pleasure and wry smile on Secretary Pete Hegseth’s face

as he signed the order is the same look we want on every paratroopers face when

they "stand in the door and put their knees to the breeze" over Sicily Drop Zone.

It's a swagger. It's a get er done moment. It's the attitude of confident brashness

that won wars, defeated enemies, deterred danger. The troops are going to love it.

Whether it was an expeditionary fight or a battle here on US soil, there have

been generations of Americans who have given the full measure to ensure that

the interests of others were protected above their own…..We should be far more

resolute and state emphatically that we will never forget….nor will we allow our

vaunted military to become pawns in social experimentation and virtue

signaling….

My grandfather entered the service here in Alabama at the onset of World War II

and served with distinction in the Glider Troops. He left home in 1942 and came

home three years later. He continued to serve through Korea and Vietnam

retiring after three decades as a general officer. …..Likewise, my father was a

career Army officer who also entered the service here in Alabama. My earliest

memory of him is like a black-and-white movie when I was three years old, and

he arrived at the house earlier than expected from his first of two tours in

Vietnam…… He was highly decorated with multiple awards for valor in combat.

My own returns from Afghanistan and Iraq were both relieving and joyous…..

They are memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life as I was reunited

with my family….. Detoxing from life in a combat zone can be trying, and for

the longest time I found myself scanning rooftops while I drove around town and

having the curious habit of carrying five things in my left hand but nothing in my

right, as if I still needed to keep my gun hand free. But I came home.

My son entered the service nearly a decade ago. I’ve had the honor to watch him

become the next of four generations to choose voluntarily to put on a uniform. It

was with great pride that I pinned on his Airborne Wings when he completed

jump school and then again when I administered his oath to join the ranks of the

commissioned Army. My son has already been away from home for training and

deployments many times.

We had a moment that I will always cherish on the day of his commissioning.

My father, long since retired, put on his uniform and the three of us went to

Nichols Hall at Auburn University to visit the Hall of Generals where every

general officer who graduated from Auburn has their picture hung. The three of

us stood next to my grandfather’s picture so that four generations were, in

essence, in one picture in uniform together. Four generations of service….four

generations who didn’t care one whit about what our Post was named….four

generations representing 85 years of service to the country and we didn’t give a

one hoot about whether or not someone on high thought something about

everything that had nothing to do with whether we would fight our nations

battles with honor and come home to our families….in the Army that my family

came up through we always saw stupid decisions from the flag pole as nothing

more than stupid decisions from the flag pole.

We have so much here at home for which to be thankful. At every turn in this

country, we have more than we need and much of what we want…..We have

freedoms, we have rights, we have security, we have so, so much…..The

smallest and least equipped grocery store in the smallest town is better stocked

than much of the shelves in bazaars and markets around the world….. The

darkest alley in most US cities is better than the main roads across much of

world….. By and large when we flip a switch the lights come on, and when we

turn the tap clean water comes out….. Generally speaking, we can say what we

want, go where we want, worship how we want and associate with whomever we

want.

This is not by chance. This is not because of virtue signaling politicians or hand

wringing pundits….. The freedoms and prosperity that we know as a nation are

made possible because of the lives of so many who put on our nations uniforms

and went to hard places to do hard things….all of whom came home changed,

and many of whom never came home. We are free and are kept free because

good people went to great lengths to go to do dangerous things…..and its time to

get back to that mentality…..

What we are watching right now with the renaming of Fort Bragg back to….

Fort Bragg…..well, it just feels right….it’s like finding out that something you

always believed in was actually always what you knew it to be….as if some

larger force just provided that kind of hand-on-the-shoulder assurance that we

were right all along…..

And I believe that we will see more of this….and I believe that soldiers will

respond…..and we will get back to training young men and women to defeat and

deter the enemies of this country….we will tell them that if they will join the big

green machine that they will do more, see more, be more, than they ever could

have been….it will be bigger than them….it will be why they will one day be the

old guy wearing the veteran hat….saluting the flag….telling the

stories…because they are proud to have done something…and many of them

will now answer the question “hey, where did you serve?” and they will say,

“me? I was at Bragg!”

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way