This was my first U.S. Army Post

 

My first U.S. Army post after Basic Training at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, was Fort Polk, Louisiana.

I didn't know who Polk was.

Now I do.

 

By Associated Press

06/14/2023 12:22 AM EDT

FORT JOHNSON, La. — A U.S. Army base in western Louisiana was renamed Tuesday to honor Sgt. William Henry Johnson, a Black hero of World War I who received the Medal of Honor nearly a century later.

Fort Johnson had previously been named after a Confederate commander, Leonidas Polk. The renaming is part of the U.S. military’s efforts to address historic racial injustice — work that included changing the names of nine Army posts that commemorated Confederate officers.

“Sgt. William Henry Johnson embodied the warrior spirit, and we are deeply honored to bear his name,” Brig. Gen. David Garner, the commanding general of the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, said in a post on Twitter.

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Two memories from my days at Ft. Polk, now Fort Johnson:

Driving to New Orleans for Mardi Gras with several other military radio service-members where we managed to forget where we parked the car. As a result, we went back to radio station WWL (we had visited it earlier) and slept on the studio floor. We found the car the next morning and drove back to base. Whew.

The other memory: in the front passenger seat of a car with a General in the back. I was assigned to take his photos. At one point I dozed off, and the General, er, reminded me to stay awake. Whew again. 

My next assignment was Vietnam.