The country’s biggest military base was abruptly renamed for a Maine hero of World War II on Monday. His daughter didn’t hear the news until a Bangor Daily News reporter called her the next morning.
“This blows my mind,” said Diane Watts of Levant.
Her father, Army Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, is the new namesake of Fort Bragg in North Carolina after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the change. It was named for Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg from 1918 to 2023, then renamed Fort Liberty following the passage of a law that effectively barred Confederate names from military bases.
President Donald Trump criticized the renaming of bases during his campaign. Even though the namesake has changed, Hegseth announced the change with a post saying, “Bragg is back!”
This Bragg is a far different figure. He saved a man’s life during the war. His daughter said he refused promotions. He rarely talked about his service, she said. When he returned home, he became a respected businessperson and was a selectman in Nobleboro.
Bragg lived most of his life there but was born in Sabattus. As a child during the Great Depression, he peddled vegetables to help his family, according to his 1999 obituary in the Portland Press Herald. He was drafted into the war before he graduated, said Watts, the youngest of his three daughters.
Bragg was an Army paratrooper. His 17th Airborne Division was based at Fort Bragg and joined the Battle of the Bulge between Belgium and Luxembourg just before Christmas 1944 on the orders of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was trying to repel a massive German invasion.
Sometime after that, Bragg was briefly captured by the Germans, Watts said. But a Nazi soldier learned that Bragg was a fellow Mason, and he could not kill him in good conscience. The German told the soldiers to hit him over the head and steal an ambulance.
Bragg drove through heavy fighting and took two German prisoners, according to a 1969 book by Eisenhower’s son. He and his partner seated one German between them, and they put the other on the vehicle’s running board. Bragg’s companion shot and killed the one outside the vehicle when he took off and ran.
A German machine gun targeted the ambulance. Bragg floored it through the fire, which killed the prisoner in the middle of the two Americans. He drove the ambulance 20 miles to a Belgium command post. John Martz, a wounded soldier in the back, credited Bragg with saving his life. The two men met in California later in life.
Hegseth cited that episode in his memorandum renaming the fort, noting the Silver Star that Bragg got for bravery and the Purple Heart he got for wounds.
Watts, Bragg’s daughter, said her father didn’t talk in detail about his service with her until she was an adult. Her mother, Barbara, suffered from depression. After Barbara attempted suicide, he recounted his time in the war in detail while Watts stayed with him for a few days.
She spent lots of time with her father as a child. He ran a building moving business, and she often helped him keep books and collect money from clients. Bragg was once asked to move a termite-infested house that collapsed during one move. He rebuilt it at a cost of $180,000, and only charged the man $1,500.
Bragg sold the business in the 1980s and went on to run a portable sawmill. He died of cancer at age 75. Barbara, who was the daughter of MLB catcher Val Picinich, died in 2016, Watts said. She imagines that her father would be appreciative but a little embarrassed by his new honor, saying he always downplayed his service by saying he was “just a private.”
“They tried to promote me, but I wouldn’t accept it,” Watts remembered him saying. “I did not want to have to give an order that sent another young man to his death.”
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