Fort Gordon, Renamed Again: From Confederate General to Medal of Honor Recipient

Earlier this year, the U.S. Army officially redesignated Fort Gordon, Georgia, in honor of Master Sgt. Gary I. Gordon, a Delta Force operator who gave his life during the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. The move closed a long and sometimes confusing loop in the post–Naming Commission era and replaced a Confederate legacy with one rooted in modern American service and sacrifice.

The installation was originally named Camp Gordon in 1941, later Fort Gordon, after John Brown Gordon, a Confederate general and postwar political figure. Gordon was a prominent officer in the Army of Northern Virginia and later became governor of Georgia and a U.S. senator. He was known as a capable battlefield commander and an influential voice in postwar Southern politics. He was also closely associated with the Lost Cause movement and white supremacist politics of the Reconstruction era, including ties to the Ku Klux Klan, which he later denied but never convincingly disproved.

For decades, the name went largely unquestioned, as many Southern installations carried similar Confederate-era designations. That changed with the establishment of the Department of Defense Naming Commission, which was tasked with removing names tied to the Confederacy from U.S. military installations.

In October 2023, Fort Gordon was redesignated Fort Eisenhower, honoring President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II and later President of the United States. The choice made sense on paper. Eisenhower was one of the most consequential American military leaders in history, and his name carried no controversy.

But Fort Eisenhower never quite stuck.

The installation has long been associated with special operations, intelligence, and cyber missions, and many within the force felt the name lacked a direct connection to the post–World War II soldiers who trained and served there. The Eisenhower name was respected, but distant.

In 2025, the Army made a final adjustment. The name Fort Gordon returned, but this time honoring a very different Gordon.

Master Sgt. Gary Ivan Gordon was born in Lincoln, Maine, in 1960. He joined the Army in 1978 and eventually earned selection into 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta, commonly known as Delta Force. By 1993, he was a seasoned operator with a reputation for calm professionalism, quiet competence, and deep loyalty to the men beside him.

Those traits defined his final mission.

On October 3, 1993, during a raid in Mogadishu, Somalia, two UH-60 Black Hawks were shot down by enemy fire. As chaos spread and Somali militia swarmed the crash sites, Gordon and Sgt. 1st Class Randy Shughart repeatedly requested permission to be inserted to protect the crew of the second downed helicopter, call sign Super 6-4.

They knew the odds. They asked anyway.