We asked the Army for a photo of the soldier for whom Fort Benning, Georgia, is now named. But the service didn’t have one. So we found this one.
That photo of former Army Cpl. Fred Benning is currently on display in the hallway of the town hall in Neligh, Nebraska, a farming town about two hours west of Omaha. Benning was the town’s mayor from 1948 to 1952, thirty years after he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in World War I, and his photo is kept in a display case with other mayors from the time.
We called Neligh City Clerk Dana Klabenes after both the Army and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent out several press releases and tweets announcing that the Army’s Fort Moore, Georgia was going to be renamed for Fred Benning. But none seemed to have his picture.
That wasn’t a problem with Fort Moore’s namesake, Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and his wife, Julia. Hal Moore is a well-known figure in Army history, and even in the civilian world for 2002’s Vietnam War film “We Were Soldiers,” based on Moore’s autobiography. Moore’s wife, Julia, revolutionized the way the Army treats families, in particular the families of soldiers killed in action.
The base was renamed for Hal and Julia Moore in 2023, but has held a central place in Army mythology for decades, as the home of three legendary training schools: U.S. Army Infantry School, Airborne school and Ranger school.
Before it was Fort Moore, the base was Fort Benning, but named for Henry Benning, a Confederate general in the Civil War who had no illusions that he was fighting the Civil War to preserve slavery.
Now it will be Benning again, but for Neligh’s Fred Benning, the Army and Hegseth insist, whether or not they actually have a picture of him.
“Army historians, including the Center of Military History, are searching through analog Army archives for a photo of Cpl. Benning from his time in service during World War I over 100 years ago,” army spokesperson Capt. Victoria Goldfedib told Task & Purpose.
So we called Neligh City Hall, and spoke with Dana Klabenes, the city clerk, who was kind enough to walk down the hall and snap a few photos of Benning.
A librarian named Mary at the Neligh Library was also kind enough to search the library’s archives of local soldiers for a photo of Benning in uniform, but she said the files only went back to World War II. It was very nice of her to check, though.
Fortunately, the library has an extensive digital collection of the Neligh News and Leader, the local paper dating to 1885. As a mayor and successful businessman, Benning was regularly in the paper and through its pages, you can see how his life in Neligh was, in some ways, a perfect time capsule of life in mid-20th-Century rural America.
According to the News and Leader, Fred Benning was born about 30 miles from Neligh, in Norfolk, Nebraska in 1900. He joined the Army in 1917 and fought in France in 1919.
When he returned, he married a girl named Florence from Kansas and, in his mid-20s, moved to Neligh with his wife and brother Henry, also a World War I vet.
In 1926, the Benning brothers bought the town’s bakery on Main Street.
But though the Bennings were done with their war, the war may not have been done with them.
A year after the pair opened the bakery, Henry, 31, had a medical attack as he drove to work. Henry’s car jumped the curb outside the bakery as he appeared to pass out behind the wheel. He stumbled home “in a stupor,” where he collapsed and died the next day.
The cause of Henry’s death was unclear, but he had been “gassed and shelled shocked” in the war, the paper said.
Fred Benning stayed in Neligh, kept the bakery running and prospered. His wife’s name often appeared in the News and Leader as a host or a guest at women’s lunches, teas and golf parties.
In April 1948, Benning was elected mayor of Neligh, nearly doubling his opponent’s vote count, 428 to 227. He served two terms, leaving office in 1952.
In four years as mayor, the town paved roads, built sewers and flood control.
Unfortunately, the most exciting moment of his time as mayor appears to have been the night that — and there’s no easy way to say this — he shot a guy. It was an accident, or what in his Army days he might have called a negligent discharge.
During a night meeting in December 1949, Benning and two other members of the town council were asked by night watchman Bill Ludwig to examine his .38 caliber revolver “for defects.” As Benning tried to work the pistol, it fired. The bullet struck the fingertip of Ralph Lundquist and lodged in a wall on a map at a spot marked “East Cemetery Road.”
“Council meeting ends abruptly after bullet hits Ralph Lundquist,” the Neligh News headline deadpanned.
Besides his time as Mayor, Benning was the Post Commander of the local American Legion and the President of the town’s Chamber of Commerce.
But his picture seems to have appeared only once in the paper, when he sold the bakery in 1965 to Delmer Reiss, a World War II vet who had worked for Benning for 21 years.
With the bakery sold, Fred and Florence planned to head south for vacation, the paper said, “for the rest of the winter but their plans are indefinite when they return.”
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