Qualla: Fort Benning

Fort Benning: Introduction

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mass Communication Specialist Chad J. McNeeley, Public domain. The soil beneath Inouye Field contains dirt from Yorktown, Antietam, Normandy, Corregidor, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Every graduating class of infantry soldiers walks across earth soaked in the blood of every American conflict since the Revolution. That symbolic gesture captures Fort Benning in miniature: a place where the past and present of American warfare live side by side, sometimes uncomfortably. Straddling the Georgia-Alabama border near Columbus, this sprawling 182,000-acre installation has trained more combat soldiers than any other post in the country. From Eisenhower and Marshall to the 75th Ranger Regiment, the names and units that have passed through Benning read like an index of American military history itself.

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Image: Mass Communication Specialist Chad J. McNeeley | Public domain

Fort Benning: Born in the Mud of 1918

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Albright66, CC BY-SA 4.0. Camp Benning opened on October 19, 1918, just weeks before the armistice ended World War I. A young Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived that December with 250 tankers from Camp Colt, Pennsylvania. By 1920, Congress declared it a permanent post and appropriated over a million dollars for...

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Image: Albright66 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fort Benning: The Triple Nickels and the Unfinished Story

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Albright66, CC BY-SA 4.0. Not all of Fort Benning's history shines. The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, nicknamed the Triple Nickels, trained here as the first all-Black parachute unit in American history. They never deployed overseas or saw combat in World War II. Instead, they were sent to the Pacif...

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Image: Albright66 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fort Benning: A Name That Won't Stay Put

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Articseahorse, CC BY-SA 4.0. The base was originally named for Henry L. Benning, a Confederate brigadier general and outspoken advocate for secession. For over a century, the name went unquestioned. Then came the national reckoning after 2020. Congress created a Naming Commission, which recommended renaming ...

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Image: Articseahorse | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fort Benning: The Maneuver Center of Excellence

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Army, Public domain. Today Fort Benning is the home of the Maneuver Center of Excellence, created after the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission consolidated the Infantry School and the Armor School, which relocated from Fort Knox in 2011. The post supports more than 120,000 people daily acro...

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Image: United States Army | Public domain