RIP to the Army’s first Black 3-star general, base namesake

The Army’s first Black three-star general died Thursday. Retired Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg was 96.

Gregg was the first living namesake of an Army post, and his service extended from war-torn Germany to the post-Vietnam, all-volunteer era.

He retired in 1981 after having led a supply and support battalion in Vietnam. Gregg was also a key player in building the Army and Air Force Exchange System, or AAFES, and was the first Black general in the quartermaster corps and the first Black deputy chief of staff for Army logistics.

For those accomplishments and others, the Army honored Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams in April 2023, when the service renamed Fort Lee in Virginia to Fort Gregg-Adams.

“I hope that this community will look with pride on the name ‘Fort Gregg-Adams,’ and that the name will instill pride in every Soldier entering our mighty gates,” Gregg said at the renaming ceremony.

Adams, who died in 2022, served as the highest-ranking Black female officer during World War II, according to the National Museum of the U.S. Army. She deployed to Europe in 1944 to lead the first Black Women’s Auxiliary Corps unit, the 6888th Postal Directory Battalion.

“Lt. Gen. Gregg’s love and commitment for this installation and for this community is forever part of our identity — part of our character,” Col. Richard Bendelewski, the garrison commander, said after Gregg’s death.

The Fort Lee name change was part of a three-year process to rename installations previously named for Confederate leaders. Lee had been named for Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

A 17-year-old Gregg left his native Florence, South Carolina, in 1946 to enlist in the Army, and he soon deployed to Germany for support supply operations.

In 1949, he attended Officer Candidate School on Camp Lee, which was renamed Fort Lee the following year, the same base that would later be named after him.

The Army officially desegregated in 1949, while Gregg attended officer training. He was present last year when the Fort Lee officers club, which was for whites officer only while he was stationed there, was renamed the Gregg-Adams Club.

Gregg ran a supply depot in Japan after donning lieutenant’s bars and, as a lieutenant colonel, commanded a supply and support battalion in Vietnam, one of the assignments he was most proud of in his career, he said.

“We became a battalion of 18 companies, eight detachments, 3,600 officers and men,” Gregg said in 2023. “It was four-times the normal battalion size, and I’ll tell you, those young people worked their fannies off to build a logistical base and provide logistical support to our forces in Vietnam. I was so proud of them.”

He became the first Black officer in the Army Quartermaster Corps promoted to the rank of general and the first Black general to wear three stars in 1977.

Before retiring in 1981, Adams would serve as deputy chief of staff for Army logistics.

In 2016, the Army established an award in his honor for logistics innovation and excellence, dubbing it the Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg Sustainment Leadership Award.

But it was a lower-level leadership billet that he most fondly remembered.

“I’ve had big jobs, but I still look upon the command of that battalion in Vietnam as the most significant point in my career,” he said.