Fort Benning
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| US Army Infantry Center & Fort Benning & the US Army Infantry School | |
|---|---|
  US Army Infantry Center Flag and US Army Infantry School Flag |
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| Active | |
| Country | USA |
| Branch | Infantry |
| Type | Garrison and School |
| Colors | Blue and White |
Fort Benning is a United States Army base, located southwest of Columbus in Muscogee and Chattahoochee counties in Georgia and Russell County, Alabama It is part of the Columbus, Georgia Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Fort Benning is a self-sustaining military community supporting in excess of 100,000 military, family members, reserve component soldiers, retirees, and civilian employees on a daily basis. It is a power projection platform, and possesses the capability to deploy combat-ready forces by air, rail, and highway. Fort Benning is the home of the United States Army Infantry School; the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation; the headquarters of the 75th Ranger Regiment along with the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment; the 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), the 14th Combat Support Hospital, and a myriad of additional tenant units.
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[edit] History
Fort Benning is named for Brigadier General Henry L. Benning, a Confederate army general and a native of Columbus, Georgia. It was established in October 1918 as Camp Benning, and did not receive permanent quarters and status until World War II. The base covers 182,000 acres (737 km²). During World War II, Fort Benning included 197,159 acres (797.87 km²), and had billeting space for 3,970 officers and 94,873 enlisted persons. The Chattahoochee River runs through Fort Benning, which straddles the Georgia/Alabama state line.
During World War II (WWII) Fort Benning became home to the 555th Parachute Infantry Company, known as the Triple Nickel. Their training began in December 1943. This represented an important milestone for black Americans. The Company, later expanded to become the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, was trained at Fort Benning and did not deploy overseas. The specialized duties of the Triple Nickel were primarily firefighting duties as parachute smoke jumpers. The 555th was secretly deployed to the Pacific Northwest in the United States in response to an anticipated threat. There was concern that forest fires were being deliberately set by the Japanese military using incendiary balloons as an attempt to produce terror among the citizens. The 555th successfully completed over 1,000 missions as smoke jumpers and thwarted the enemy's attempts to spread terror within the United States.
Fort Benning's first mission was to provide Basic Training for units participating in World War I. With the end of that war, Benning was closed until the Army could find a use for it. The first Tenant Unit to arrive was the Infantry School, which has been there ever since. The Civilian Conservation Corps completed the wooden permanent buildings in the 1930s, and Fort Benning expanded from that point forward.
Fort Benning is where the US 2nd Armored Division was formed.
The Airborne School on Main Post has three 249-foot (76 m) drop towers called "Control Descent Towers" for training paratroopers, familiar Fort Benning landmarks, they were built after soldiers trained in New Jersey on a similar tower designed by the company which built parachute towers for the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Only three towers stand today, the fourth tower was toppled by a tornado on March 14th, 1954.
Convicted Vietnam War war criminal William Calley spent 3 1/2 years under house arrest at Fort Benning.
The 4th Infantry Division, first of four divisions committed by the United States to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, reorganized and completed its basic training at Fort Benning (Sand Hill and Harmony Church areas} from October 1950 to May 1951, when it deployed to Germany for five years.
[edit] Mission
The post is home to the United States Army Infantry School as well being the Army's airborne (parachuting) school. Further, it is home to a Basic Combat Training Brigade (BCTB) on Sand Hill. This is distinguished from the Infantry Training Brigade (ITB) in that ITB includes both basic training and infantry Advanced Individual Training (AIT) for Soldiers who enlisted to be Infantrymen. ITB training therefore lasts a total 14 weeks, while BCT is 9 weeks. BCTB is used to train non-infantry personnel, who go on to AIT at other duty stations.
[edit] Post organization
There are four main cantonment areas on Fort Benning. They are the Main Post area, Kelly Hill, Sand Hill and Harmony Church.
Main Post houses various garrison and smaller FORSCOM units of Fort Benning such as 36th Engineer Group, 988th Military Police Company, the 43rd Engineer Battalion, and the 29th Infantry Regiment, as well as a number of TRADOC-related tenants, e.g., Officer Candidate School, Primary Leadership Development Course and Airborne School. Adjacent to Infantry Hall (the post headquarters building, is the Ranger Memorial, an outdoors monument to Rangers.
Kelly Hill houses the 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized).
Sand Hill is the primary location of the Infantry Training Brigade and Basic Combat Training Brigade.
Harmony Church area houses the Sniper School and the Ft. Benning phase of Ranger School, and the 1st Battalion of the 29th Infantry Regiment (training support for Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Strykers) at Building 5500. Victory Pond, where the amphibious training for the Bradleys take place is out there. Also in this area, about 1 mile (2 km) from Red Diamond Road is a Civil War era cemetery in a large meadow. The graveyard is marked in the C C 2 area on the Fort Benning tactical military map as CEMETERY 2.
Fryar Drop Zone, the drop zone that airborne students land on, is located in the Alabama portion of Fort Benning.
Fort Benning is also home to:
- The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as School of the Americas
- The US Army Pathfinder School
- Airborne School
- Sniper School
- Stryker & Bradley Schools
- Ranger School
- 75th Ranger Regiment Headquarters
- 3rd Ranger Battalion
- The Infantry Officer's Basic Course (IOBC)
As of August 2005, Major General Walter Wojdakowski is the current post commander. He also serves as the Chief of Infantry, considered the senior Infantryman in the U.S. Army.
Fort Benning was selected by the most recent round of the Base Realignment and Closing Commission (BRAC]]), to house the new Maneuver Center. This realignement will merge the United States Army Armor School, currently located at Fort Knox, Kentucky with the Infantry Center.
Fort Benning is the main set of the popular and free online first-person shooter, America's Army, a computer game developed and produced by the Army as a recruiting tool.
Post Commanders have included General John 'Black Jack' Pershing, General George S. Patton and General Omar Bradley, for whom the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was named.
[edit] Fort Benning in popular culture
[edit] Movies
- The movie "The Army in Overalls" was a short documentary filmed at Fort Benning in 1941.
- The movie "Parachute Battalion" starring Harry Carey, Edmond O'Brien, and Buddy Ebsen was also filmed on Fort Benning just prior to WWII in 1941.
- The movie "The Green Berets" starring John Wayne was filmed at Fort Benning in 1966 and in downtown Columbus, Ga. Including the attack on the simulated special forces A camp; The helicopter assault on the bridging of the river; The house where the SF team kidnapped the NVA general was located in downtown Columbus, Georgia; The movie theater on Sand Hill area of Fort Benning is in the background on one of the helicopter landing scenes in the beginning of the movie; After they arrive in Vietnam, you can see a large aircraft hanger, this is also visible in the movie "We Were Soldiers."
- The movie "Jumping Jacks" starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis was filmed at Airborne School and on Harmony Church, Fort Benning in 1951.
- The movie Tank starring James Garner, Shirley Jones, C.Thomas Howell, and James Cromwell was filmed at Fort Benning in 1984, inside a bar on an Army post with a neon sign reading END OF THE HALL was visible, this was filmed inside the former Noncommissioned Officer Club on Sand Hill; The 2/10th field artillery did 10 hours of PT on Kelly Hill; T back gate to Kelly Hill was shown as the main gate in the movie, "We ran all day for pizza and beer" as stated by PFC Thomas Ward; The town in which James Garner destroys the local jail is located on Lumpkin Road; The housing area they all lived in is called Upatoi Creek housing area, on Custer Road next to the National Cemetery.
- The movie "A Time To Triumph" starring Patty Duke was filmed at Fort Benning in 1985
- The movie "Your Mother Wears Combat Boots" starring Barbara Eden was filmed at Fort Benning in 1988, most of the film was shot at Airborne School and feature the original barracks which housed the 555 P.I.R., they have since been demolished and replaced with a parking lot.
- In the movie "Scent of a Woman, Al Pacino's character is questioned by his nephew at which US Army fort he lost his vision. "Fort Bragg?" questions the nephew. "No, Fort Benning," replies Pacino's character, Lt. Col. Frank Slade.
- The movie "Black Hawk Down" starring Josh Hartnett was filmed here during the summer of 2000.
- The movie "We Were Soldiers" starring Mel Gibson, Barry Pepper, and Greg Kinnear was filmed at Fort Benning in 2000, some notable scenes include the 249' Control Decent Towers on Eubanks Field; The Officer housing area along South Lumpkin Road; Sidewalk next to the Field of Four Chaplains where Command Sergeant Major Plumley (a current resident of Columbus, GA.) chastises a young Soldier for saying "Nice weather today, Sergeant Major!" and he replies with, "What are you, a fucking weatherman!?"; Doughboy Stadium is where they talk to all of the families; The same aircraft hanger used in The Green Berets is also used in this film; Infantry Hall in featured in the last scene, disguised as an airport.
[edit] TV series
- During Season Two of 24 a Colonel Ron Samuels headed a Special Ops team tracking a bomb. This team was said to be based at Fort Benning. Jack Bauer was also said to have been approached by Samuels whilst being in the military.
[edit] Books
- In one of W.E.B. Griffin's books in the Brotherhood of War series a chewing out at the Airborne School was described as a high school drop-out screaming into your face that "He didn't know what kinda chicken-s*** outfit you came here from, but you better get your act together real quick, or I'll ship you outta here so fast your asshole won't catch up with you for 2 weeks!"
- A few characters in Tom Clancy's bestselling novel Rainbow Six were trained/stationed in Fort Benning.
- In his book "That Others May Live", pararescueman Jack Brehm recounts his intense training at Fort Benning that he went through in order to become a PJ.
[edit] Video Games
- Part of America's Army, which was designed and distributed by the United States Army, takes place at Fort Benning.
[edit] Legend
A story circulates in the Fort Benning area that in the past there had been a situation where Phenix City, Alabama, a town across the Chattahoochee River, had some Fort Benning troops in jail and wouldn't give them back. The story goes that the (unnamed) Commanding General assembled 8000 troops at the bridge and threatened to send them in to rescue the men if they weren't released. An alternate version told was that the General pulled several tanks up on the banks of the river and threatened to open fire. The version with tanks often is cited as having been General George S. Patton when he was at Fort Benning. However, a military historian has stated that the story was partially true in the sense that a general once threatened to roll tanks into Phenix City but that the general in question was not Patton.
[edit] General Information
[edit] Command Group
- Commanding General/Commandant: Major General Walter Wojdakowski
- Deputy Commandant: Colonel Michael Linnington
- Command Sergeant Major: Command Sergeant Major Joe Ulibarri
[edit] Units Present at Fort Benning
Unit, Command
- 11th Infantry Regiment, TRADOC
- 1st Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment (Maneuver Captains Career Course)
- 2nd Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment (Basic Officer Leadership Course)
- 3rd Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment (Officer Candidate School)
- 1st Battalion 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment (Airborne School)
- 29th Infantry Regiment, TRADOC
- 30th AG Reception Battalion, TRADOC
- Henry Caro Noncommissioned Officer Academy, TRADOC
- Ranger Training Brigade, TRADOC
- 4th Ranger Training Battalion, TRADOC
- Infantry Training Brigade, TRADOC
- 1st Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment
- 2nd Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment
- 1st Battalion, 50th Infantry Regiment
- 2nd Battalion, 58th Infantry Regiment
- 3rd Battalion, 330th Infantry Regiment
- 192nd Infantry Brigade, TRADOC
- 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry Regiment
- 3rd Battalion, 47th Infantry Regiment
- 2nd Battalion, 54th Infantry Regiment
- U.S. Army Garrison, Installation Management Agency (IMA)
- 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division
- D Troop, 10th Cavarly, 3rd Brigade Combat Team
- 1-15 Infantry, 3rd Brigade Combat Team
- 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team
- 317 Engineer, 3rd Brigade Combat Team
- 1-10 Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade Combat Team
- 13th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion 3d Sustainment Brigade
- 14th Field Combat Support Hospital, 44th MEDCOM
- 283d Army Band
- Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, TRADOC
- 75th Ranger Regiment, U.S. Army Special Operations Command
- Martin Army Community Hospital, AMEDD
- DENTAC, USA DENTAC
- US.Army Marksmanship Unit, USAAC
- 17th Air Support Operations Squadron, USAF
