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Fort Gordon
By Adam Folk| Staff Writer
Saturday, December 27, 2008 ·
With a new command set to bring more than 200 new personnel to
the post, Fort Gordon is a growing and vibrant part of the Augusta
area.
Home of the U.S. Army Signal Center and the Dwight D. Eisenhower
Army Medical Center, Fort Gordon serves as an integral training
center for Signal soldiers who provide communications technology
to the armed forces.
Other branches of the military, including the Air Force, Navy and
Marine Corps, send their troops to Fort Gordon for communications
training. Personnel from the Army and other branches also perform
military intelligence tasks.
By 2010, the 7th Signal Command will be based at Fort Gordon and
the post will receive its third flag officer. Brig. Gen. Jennifer
Napper will join Brig. Gen. Donald Bradshaw, who oversees the medical
center, and Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Foley, who is over the U.S. Army
Signal Center.
The command is expected to bring 171 new civilians and 69 military
personnel whose mission will be to "operate and defend the Continental
U.S. portion of the Army's global computer network, called LandWarNet,"
according to a Fort Gordon news release.
The command will ensure computer network access for the soldier
on the ground to the desktop computers in the White House.
Construction on a $340 million, 500,000-square-foot National Security
Agency/Central Security Service Georgia facility is under way and
expected to be completed in 2010. It will bring as many as 1,000
more jobs.
Work was recently completed on a $5.7 million Battle Command Battle
Laboratory.
Communications and intelligence are not the only missions at Fort
Gordon. The Army medical center forged a partnership with the Augusta
Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers in 2004 to create
an active-duty rehabilitation wing at the VA. Many soldiers from
Fort Gordon have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Currently, the 278th M.P. Company of the Georgia National Guard
is serving in Iraq.
There are about 300 wounded warriors who are part of the Warrior
in Transition Battalion stationed at Fort Gordon.
Fort Gordon's history dates to World War II, when land from several
rural communities in Richmond County was obtained to build Camp
Gordon in 1941. The camp was named after a Civil War commander from
Georgia, Gen. John B. Gordon. One of the first units to train at
the camp was the 4th Infantry Division. Its soldiers were among
the first to land on Utah Beach during the D-Day Invasion of Normandy.
Also during World War II, German and Italian prisoners of war were
housed at the camp.
After the war, there was a mass departure from the armed forces,
leaving Camp Gordon a virtual ghost town and causing Augusta supporters
of the base to become concerned about its future.
In 1948, the draft was re-established. With the Korean War on
the horizon and the Cold War looming, Camp Gordon was once again
a vital entity. A military police school came to the base, as did
a Signal Corps training center. Camp Gordon became Fort Gordon,
a permanent installation, in 1956. The MP school moved to Fort McClellan,
Ala., in the 1970s and the Signal Center made its home at Fort Gordon
in 1974.
From the Saturday, December 27, 2008 edition of the Augusta
Chronicle
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