Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum directing that Fort Liberty, North Carolina, be renamed as Fort Bragg. Today, that order was implemented.
The new name for the largest installation in the Army honors Army Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a native of Maine, who enlisted in July 1943 at age 23. During World War II, he served with the 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 17th Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, and completed his Army training at the installation that now bears his name. Following that training, he left for the European theater.
“On a bitter cold January morning outside of Bastogne, Belgium, as the Battle of the Bulge raged, he would put that training to [the] test,” said Army Lt. Gen. Gregory K. Anderson, commander of XVIII Airborne Corps. “The 17th Airborne, or the ‘Golden Talons’ division, was engaged in a fierce battle over a critical piece of terrain. During that fighting, Pfc. Bragg was wounded and taken prisoner along with four other paratroopers.”
At a German aid station, Anderson said, one of the paratroopers talked with the German guard. The two found commonality in that they were both Freemasons.
“They somehow convinced the German guard to let the prisoners go, but only if Pfc. Bragg first knocked the German guard out with a rifle, so it looked like he struggled,” Anderson said. “Wounded as he was, Pfc. Bragg was more than happy to oblige, as well as he took the German soldier’s uniform, and then he commandeered a German ambulance nearby.”
With the wounded paratroopers loaded in the ambulance, Bragg drove back to the American lines while taking fierce enemy fire the entire time. The young soldier was sure enemy fire had killed all the wounded paratroopers he was hoping to save. Even after reaching an allied hospital, he remained unsure of the condition of his passengers and was never told if his actions saved their lives.
“It was for this action that Pfc. Bragg earned the Silver Star, the third highest military decoration for valor in combat,” Anderson said. “He was a hero, but we can only imagine the burden he carried for years believing he had let his fellow paratroopers down.”
Following the war, Bragg returned to Maine and married his wife Barbara in 1946. The couple raised three daughters, Linda, Diane and Deborah. Diane attended the base renaming ceremony.
“Bragg rarely spoke of his service,” Anderson said. “And for nearly 50 years, he continued to believe he was the sole survivor of the desperate flight from captivity in the Ardennes.”
In the early 1990s, as the 50th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge approached, John Martz, another member of the 17th Airborne Division who fought in the war, reflected on his own wartime experience.
“John, too, had been wounded in battle near Bastogne and found himself in a barn 20 miles behind the German lines,” Anderson said. “Someone, a nameless paratrooper, had loaded him and three others into an ambulance and drove them to safety.”
Martz wanted to know more about the man who saved him. So, he began a letter-writing campaign to the surviving members of his division, looking for information about what happened to him. One of those letters made its way to Roland Bragg.
Bragg later told a reporter that upon reading the letter from Martz, “chills went up and down my spine.”
“Roland traveled to California and was reunited with the paratrooper whose life he had saved,” Anderson said. “Two ordinary men, bound by an extraordinary moment, found each other across the decades. This reunion wasn’t just a footnote in Roland’s story. It was and stands as a testament to the bonds forged here in this place, bonds that many who have trained and served here would immediately recognize and feel.”
While Bragg’s military history during WWII is now a matter of record, his personal life and the kind of man he was as a civilian are best known to his family. His granddaughter, Rebecca Amirpour, said he was a loving grandfather, devoted husband, father and grandfather, and a pillar of his community in Nobleboro, Maine. She also said he was shy about discussing his military service.
“I never saw my granddad wear his military uniform,” she said. “He was not one to go to a Memorial Day parade or a Veterans Day parade. Even one Memorial Day, when I was marching in a parade in our town, he was working.”
Amirpour said she remembers, in the mid-1990s, when her grandfather first heard from John Martz via the letter.
“My grandfather had spent his entire life thinking everyone in the back of that ambulance had died, and I feel like it was a tremendous gift for him to learn that someone had survived,” she said. “It was a true blessing.”
From her grandmother, Amirpour said, she learned something of her family history and a bit of her grandfather’s time in the war.
“My grandmother told me that she and my grandfather were dating before he left for the war, and she decided to send him a Parker pen and pencil set with metal caps for Christmas,” Amirpour said. “When he got that set, he wore it over the pocket, over his heart.”
Amirpour said his strategic placement of that pen and pencil set later saved his life.
“When he was hit in the chest with shrapnel, the metal pen and pencil prevented the shrapnel from entering his heart,” she said.
Amirpour recounted a passage from a letter Bragg wrote to his brother and sister-in-law while recovering in an Army hospital.
“This war is no fun … there is too much grief in it,” she read from Bragg’s letter. “I lost a lot of my buddies, but they all went down fighting. I learned one thing, and that is rank doesn’t mean a thing when you’re in a tight spot. It’s the ones with a little common sense. All I can say is that I thank God that I’m still here today.”
Bragg died in January 1999 and is buried in Nobleboro.
“I think my granddad, if he were here today, would encourage the folks here to use their common sense to work hard in school and beyond,” she said. “And most certainly, he would want them to appreciate the importance of giving back and making an impact on your own communities when you’re done with your service to your country.”
For his actions in WWII, Bragg was awarded the Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity, and a Purple Heart for wounds sustained during the Battle of the Bulge. He was trained at both Fort Bragg and Camp Mackall, North Carolina, before deploying to Europe. He served as a toxic gas handler.
Anderson said it’s been 80 years since Bragg trained on the installation that bears his name and that Fort Bragg has since then served as the force generation platform where the best American soldiers are built and the place from which they deploy to every major conflict around the world.
“It has been my experience that this place and our nation and our Army are chock full of people like Roland Bragg,” Anderson said. “Fort Bragg is where soldiers transform, where the ordinary find the extraordinary, and where the call finds its answer; where a quiet man from Maine emerges a hero. In his honor and in the shared legacy of all who have called this place home, we answer the call. Welcome back to Bragg, [and] may this place continue to forge heroes for our nation.”
This Defense news article "Fort Liberty Becomes Fort Bragg, Renamed for Battle of Bulge Hero" was originally found on https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/
