A symbolic change for a US Army base. Fort Pickett, in Virginia, changed its name this Friday, March 24, 2023. It must be said that it bore the name of a general of the confederation.
With our correspondent in Washington, Guillaume Naudin
For more than 80 years and the creation of the camp that later became a fort, the inhabitants of Nottoway County had no questions. It was Fort Pickett, named after George Pickett, a local general.
But George Pickett was far from the sharpest bayonet of his generation. The last of his class at Westpoint, he is best known for Pickett’s Charge, which sent his 1,500 men to their deaths in the Battle of Gettysburg under General Lee, commander of the Southern armies in the War of Secession.
It is this southern commitment that no longer passes today. The military has decided to rename several facilities that bear names from that hated era. A Fort Lee, still in Virginia, will soon bear the names of two African-American soldiers.
Renamed Fort Barfoot
In the meantime, Fort Pickett is now called Fort Barfoot. It is a tribute to a soldier from the region who, before the Korean War and the Vietnam War, distinguished himself during the Second World War to the point of receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor.
In Italy, he had in particular neutralized two machine guns of the Nazi army which threatened his men, by personally evacuating two of them over more than a kilometer before taking 17 prisoners in the enemy ranks, which is a little different from to have defended slavery by arms.
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