U.S. wants to rename Va. bases for Black officers, Medal of Honor recipient, female surgeon

A commission Congress created to recommend new titles for nine U.S. Army bases — including three in Virginia — chose on Tuesday to honor Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams at the sprawling base outside of Petersburg that plays a central role in providing logistical support to Army operations.

“It’s a great day in Virginia,” exclaimed Rep. Don McEachin, D-4th, who had led an effort with other Black congressional leaders to name the base after Gregg, the Army’s highest ranking minority general when he retired in 1981 after 35 years in the service.

The naming commission also recommended that Fort Pickett — currently named after George Pickett, a Confederate officer known for a doomed charge against U.S. forces at Gettysburg — be rechristened Fort Barfoot after Tech. Sgt. Van T. Barfoot. A Medal of Honor recipient, Barfoot also took a highly public stand in 2009 in defense of his right to fly the American flag from a pole he erected outside of his home in Henrico County.

Fort A.P. Hill, named for a general whose statue is among the last to Confederates still standing in Richmond, would be renamed Fort Walker after Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the first female surgeon in the U.S. Army, who received a Medal of Honor for her medical service to wounded Union troops during the Civil War.

The panel will formally submit its recommendations later this year to Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, a retired four-star Army general who is the first African American to hold the office.

“Today’s announcement highlights the commission’s efforts to propose nine new installation names that reflect the courage, values, sacrifices, and diversity of our military men and women,” Austin said in a statement on Tuesday.

The commission’s chair, retired Adm. Michelle J. Howard, said that when the panel began its work under the National Defense Reauthorization Act adopted last year, “We realized that we had more heroes than we did bases to name.”

“And we were overwhelmed with the greatness of the American Soldier — from those who gave their entire adult lives to the Army, to those who sacrificed themselves in valorous acts,” Howard said in a statement on Tuesday. “We were reminded that courage has no boundaries by man-made categories of race, color, gender, religion, or creed.”

For McEachin, the choice of Gregg was personally satisfying because he has known him since childhood. Gregg, born in South Carolina, moved to Newport News as a teenager and met the future congressman’s father, Ivan, better known as Sandy, who became a lifelong friend.

But McEachin is quick to add, “He’s exceedingly well qualified.”

Gregg enlisted in the Army in 1945 and became involved in supply logistics to support the reconstruction of war-shattered Germany. He applied for Officer Candidate School the same year that then-President Harry Truman ordered the racial desegregation of U.S. armed forces.

He rose through the ranks to become logistics director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and deputy chief of staff for logistics for the Army. The Army named its award for logistics achievement after him.

But the naming commission also noted that Gregg “promoted equality at home” by desegregating the Fort Lee Officers Club as a young officer in the 1950s.

Charity Adams retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 1945, the same year Gregg joined the service. She, too, hailed from South Carolina, but interrupted her pursuit of a master’s degree in psychology to join the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942 to support the U.S. war effort.

In 1944, Adams, then 25, was named to lead the first unit of African American women serving the Army overseas, the 6888th Central Postal Directory in England. The unit directed the delivery of mail to and from almost seven million American soldiers fighting in Europe, handling some 65,000 letters a day.

“Though Arthur Gregg and Charity Adams served on different missions and in different conflicts, consistent themes of leadership, dedication and problem solving united their service,” the naming commission said.

“Moreover, in overcoming the [logistical] sustainment obstacles caused by war, they also helped overcome the social obstacles caused by segregation,” the commission said. “Their service simultaneously supported mission success and societal progress.”

Barfoot, whose name would replace that of Pickett on the base in Nottoway County, received the Medal of Honor for his heroics in fighting the Germans in Italy in 1944. By himself, he subdued three German machine gun nests, taking 17 prisoners before repelling a German counter-attack the same day by using a bazooka to disable the lead tank.

A native of Mississippi, he served as senior Army adviser to the Virginia National Guard and retired in Virginia as a colonel.

But he wasn’t done. At age 90, Barfoot made national news by generating a groundswell that forced his local homeowners association in Henrico to back down after it ordered him to remove the 21-foot flagpole he had erected outside of his home.

Walker, whose name would replace A.P. Hill’s at the base in Caroline County, was a native New Yorker. She tended wounded Union soldiers in Fredericksburg and other Civil War battlefields, and was imprisoned in Richmond by Confederates as a suspected Union spy.

She received the Medal of Honor in 1865 at the recommendation of Union Gens. William T. Sherman and George Thomas, “and continued to wear the medal thereafter, including through five decades of campaigning for women’s equality and women’s rights,” the commission said.

McEachin welcomed the replacement of the names of Confederate leaders at U.S. Army bases.

“We’re Virginians and it’s going to take us a minute to adjust to it,” he said, “and we’ll adjust.”

“It’s a good thing.”