Fort Gregg-Adams

Just 18 days after a state of war with Germany was declared, the first Camp Lee was selected as a state mobilization camp and later became a division training camp.

In June 1917, building began and within sixty days some 14,000 men were on the installation. The post was home to the 155th Depot Brigade. The role of depot brigades was to receive recruits and draftees, then organize them and provide them with uniforms, equipment and initial military training. Depot brigades also received soldiers returning home at the end of the war and carried out their mustering out and discharges.

When construction work ended, there were accommodations for 60,335 men. On 15 July 1917, the War Department announced that the camp would be named after Colonel Robert E. Lee, a US Army Colonel who later served in the Confederacy during the Civil War. In 2015 Brigadier General Malcolm Frost said, "Every Army installation is named for a soldier who holds a place in our military history." He further explained that the historic names chosen "represent individuals, not causes or ideologies," and that it was done "in the spirit of reconciliation, not division."[7]

After World War I, Camp Lee was taken over by the Commonwealth of Virginia and designated a game preserve. Later, portions of the land were incorporated into the Petersburg National Battlefield and the Federal Correctional Institution, Petersburg.

In 1920 Camp Lee was still active, as the US 1920 Census showed many soldiers still stationed there.

In October 1940, the War Department ordered the construction of another Camp Lee on the site of the earlier installation. Built as rapidly as the first, construction was still ongoing when the Quartermaster Replacement Training Center (QMRTC) started operation in February 1941. Their number grew to 25,000 in 1942, and peaked at 35,000 in 1944.

Camp Lee was also the home of a Medical Replacement Training Center (MRTC), but as the Quartermaster training increased, it was decided to relocate the MRTC to Camp Pickett.

Later, the QMRTC was re-designated as an Army Services Forces Training Center, but it retained its basic mission of training Quartermaster personnel.

While the QMRTC was getting underway, the Quartermaster School was transferred to Camp Lee. A full program of courses was conducted, including Officer Candidate School. By the end of 1941, Camp Lee was the center of both basic and advanced training of Quartermaster personnel and held this position throughout the war.

When World War II ended, the fate of Camp Lee was in question. In 1946, the War Department announced that Camp Lee would be retained as a center for Quartermaster training. Official recognition of its permanent status was obtained in 1950 and the post was redesignated as Fort Lee.

The Army Logistics University is located on Fort Lee

Immediately troops began Quartermaster training for the Korean War and continued for the next three years. Fort Lee also had a Women's Army Corps (WAC) training center. After the Korean War, progress was made on an ambitious permanent building program.

Under the twenty-year program, Fort Lee changed from an installation of temporary wooden structures to a modern Army post with permanent brick and cinder block buildings.

The Quartermaster Training Center, created to supervise the training of Quartermaster personnel and troop units, brought an intensification of training activity within the Quartermaster Corps. As a result, the courses formerly taught at other locations were incorporated in the curriculum of the Quartermaster School.

Profound changes were evident at Fort Lee during 1962. The post became a Class 1 military installation under Second United States Army. The Quartermaster School became a part of the Continental Army Command service school system and was also selected to serve as the home of the Quartermaster Corps and Corps Historian. The Second United States Army was inactivated at Fort Lee in 1966 until its reactivation at Fort Gillem, Georgia in 1983.

Retired Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg, namesake of the newly named Gregg-Adams Club, is congratulated by Maj. Gen. Mark T. Simerly.

In July 1973, Fort Lee came under the control of Training and Doctrine Command.

Fort Lee is the country's first army post to host a 'full-size' statue commemorating the service of women in the Army. The statue was unveiled in 2013.[8]

In 2005 a Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) law was passed by Congress. One of BRAC's requirements was the relocation of the United States Army Ordnance Center and School headquarters, the Ordnance Mechanical Maintenance School, the United States Army Ordnance Munitions and Electronic Maintenance School, and the Ordnance Museum to Fort Lee by the end 2011.[9] The transfer of artifacts from Aberdeen to Fort Lee began in August 2009, with the former museum now designated the U.S. Army Ordnance Training and Heritage Center at Fort Lee.[9]

On 27 April 2023 during a redesignation ceremony[10] the name of Fort Lee was changed to Fort Gregg-Adams which is named after two African American officers Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams.[5][2] The name change was recommended by the Commission on the Naming of Items of the Department of Defense[11] as part of the renaming of military assets which were associated with the Confederate States of America.[12][13] The naming of Fort Gregg-Adams is notable as it is the first time in modern American history where a fort has been named after a service member who is still alive.[2] Other infrastructure on the base have already been renamed including water towers, the street signs along the former Lee Avenue, now Gregg Avenue, and the signage for the Gregg-Adams Officers' Club on base, into which notably Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg had been denied entrance back in 1950 as a young Second Lieutenant, at a time when discrimination and segregation were still being practiced against African American Uniformed Personnel, even against an executive order to the contrary, signed by President Harry S. Truman two years prior.[14][15][16]