Valor Friday

As we reported the other day, Fort Benning is once more Fort Benning. The large Army facility is no longer named after Confederate Brigadier General Henry Benning, who was a staunch anti-abolitionist and vocal and active participant in the secession cause. It is now named for Sergeant Fred Benning of Nebraska.

Fred Benning was born 12 January 1900 in Norfolk, Nebraska, but spent most of his life in nearby Neligh. Neligh is (and was at the time) a small, rural town of less than 2,000 people. After returning from World War I, Benning would open a bakery with his older brother in the town, which he operated for nearly 40 years.

Benning enlisted into the Army on 18 April 1917. This was less than two weeks after the US officially entered the war, having declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. The President had called for increasing the Army to 500,000 men, a number in uniform not seen since the Civil War.

Benning became a machine gunner in the 16th Infantry Regiment, which was assigned to the 1st Expeditionary Division. The 1st Expeditionary Division would soon be known as the 1st Infantry Division, and popularly known as “The Big Red One.”

The 16th Infantry dates back to the Civil War, and has participated in nearly every war the US has been involved in since (missing only the Korean War). During WWI, the 16th shipping for France in late June 1917. They became one of the first four American regiments to arrive in the theater. The regiment’s 2nd Battalion was selected to fly the flag as part of a military parade in Paris on July 4th of that year. They made a five mile march through the city to the grave of the Marquis de Lafayette, and declared to the hero of the American Revolution, “Lafayette, we are here!”

The regiment then trained alongside the legendary French Chasseurs Alpins, who had been nicknamed the Blue Devils in honor of their fighting prowess. The Chasseurs Alpins were the unit of Albert Severin Roche, who I talked about previously. The 16th Infantry became the first Americans to fight and sustain casualties in the trenches on the Western Front when they repelled a German night assault on 3 November 1917.

The 16th Infantry would spend the next year fighting along the front. Their greatest triumph was a hard fighting slog to liberate Fléville on 4 October 1918 in the Argonne Forest. The 16th Infantry seized its main objective on the first day of the Meuse-Argonne Campaign, the only regiment of the First Army to do so. Days later Benning would earn the country’s second highest award for gallantry in action, the Distinguished Service Cross.

On 9 October, near the French town of Exermont, the 16th Infantry was doing what they were known for. Their motto was “No mission too difficult, no sacrifice too great—Duty First!” They proved that with more than 1,000 men killed (or mortally wounded) in action and nearly 3,400 wounded in just their one year of combat action. That’s an average of more than ten casualties per day for an entire year.

On that October day Benning was a corporal. When his platoon commander was killed in action and then two senior non-commissioned officers were also knocked out of the fight, the 18 year old junior NCO took charge. Benning commanded the platoon ” and, by his able leadership and courage, conducted it through heavy fire to its assigned position on Hill 240,” reads his award citation.

The battle for Hill 240 went on for several days. At one point, according to a contemporary media account, the Germans defending the hill waved a white flag of surrender, and then fired on the Allied troops as they advanced to accept it. Their dogged defense of the hill was in vain, as the Allies would be victorious in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and would, just a month later, press the Central Powers to an armistice that ended the war.

Benning and the 16th Infantry received seven campaign streamers during the war and two Croix de Guerre from the French government. Benning’s was one of at least 97 Distinguished Service Crosses earned by the regiment’s soldiers. After Armistice Day (11 November 1918) they served in Germany on occupation duty for nine months before receiving orders home.

Benning returned to Neligh. He married Florence Reiter (1903-1997) in 1926. They had one daughter that died in infancy. In addition to his bakery, Benning was active in civic and veterans organizations in the area. During World War II, he gave speeches to draftees before they left. He was a mayor of Neligh for four years, commanded the American Legion post for 17 years, was president of the Chamber of Commerce, and was active with the Masons and VFW in his area.

Benning passed away in 1974 at the age of 74. Benning’s brother Henry (b. 1895), was also a veteran. He was with Company M, 320th Infantry during the Great War. The 320th Infantry also saw action during the Meuse-Argonne. Henry died suddenly in 1927 at the age of 32 after suffering a debilitating stroke. He’d married just the year before to Anita Apfel (1899-1979), who never remarried.

Category: Army, Distinguished Service Cross, Historical, Valor, We Remember, WWI