36 hours in Columbus … if you salute all things military

Columbus has been a “military town” since 1918, when the Congress established Camp Benning to train infantry soldiers. Today, Fort Benning ranges across 182,000 acres in two states, touching more than 120,000 soldiers, families, retirees, and civilian employees daily, and providing nearly $6 billion in annual economic impact. All things military stretch beyond Fort Benning’s boundaries. See soldiers in dress blues or army combat uniforms, often with family, along downtown streets, in shopping centers, and restaurants. Visit three national museums focused on the military. See the monuments, shop the military supply stores, and see where familiar, military-themed, movies were made. And, pay respect at cemeteries where soldiers across three centuries are interred.

Here are 10 places to visit if you salute all things military during 36 hours in Columbus.

Note: A 36 hours in Columbus guide specific to the Civil War is here

#1 – A first-time visit to Fort Benning

A first-time visitor to Fort Benning ought to focus on Main Post buildings and grounds constructed in the 1930s, for it is here the historic, architecturally significant, character of the post is found. Back then, historians note, the Army believed that “soldiers learn best in pleasant environments.” The planners, architects and landscape designers of Main Post drew on elements of classical Greek and Roman structures, roads and grounds. Among the structures to visit: Ridgeway Hall, the original Infantry School building, now a soldier service center. Open to the public, walk especially the three levels of crescent-shaped halls. (There is a Starbucks on the lowest level.) The Chapel, open Sundays for protestant services at 9:30 and 11 a.m., and a Spanish catholic mass at 12:30 p.m., recognition of the large number of Latinos training on the post. The Chapel’s carillons ring on the hour. The Officers Club, now The Benning Club, is open to the public as a dining and conference center. Note the art and artifacts, including a mural-size oil painting of the Battle for Columbus by Antonio Mari, prints by Bruno Zupan, and memorabilia from battles won. The buffet lunch at the Lexington is one of the best values in Columbus. The Infantry Bar, once crowded with hard-drinking officers, today is largely abandoned, though wall displays are worth a stop. And, The Playhouse Building 72, now Nett Hall, built in 1933 to entertain soldiers of the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment. It is among the first Army theaters to show talking pictures. All of these venues are within walking distance of one another. Locate them on a map supplied with the self-guided tour of Fort Benning prepared by the post’s office of morale, welfare and recreation. Another guide that focuses on Main Post was prepared for the Army by a local Boy Scouts council. Both are excellent.
Enter Fort Benning off I-l85, stopping at the Visitor’s Center for a security check and pass.

Get maps and directions: Fort Benning

#2 – If you have more time, or on a return visit to Fort Benning

If you have more time, or on a return visit to Fort Benning, consider any of the 36 points of interest on the self-guided tour, all well-mapped and sign-posted. Among the most-visited: The 249-foot jump towers used in basic paratrooper training. Two of the three towers are still in use, typically on weekends. Riverside, the Bussey family’s summer house predates Fort Benning. Today it is home to the post’s commanding general and open to the public during the Christmas holidays. Gowdy Field, a baseball park built in 1925, remains largely intact. Walk the field where Jackie Robinson and Whitey Ford played. Sit in the same dugouts they used. The original Murdock drinking fountains still work. The Main Post Cemetery, where among the dead are Italian and German POWs interned at Fort Benning during World War II. The memorial to Calculator the Dog at Sacrifice Field. Legend has it that this 1920s-era mutt walked as if he had a bad leg. Soldiers named him Calculator because he “puts down three and carries one.” The memorial reads: He made better dogs of us all.
Enter Fort Benning off I-l85, stopping at the Visitor’s Center for a security check and pass.

Get maps and directions: Fort Benning

#3 – A museum honoring the infantry soldier

The National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center honors U.S. infantry soldiers across the nation’s history. Opened in 2009, the 190,000 square-foot facility attracts 300,000 visitors a year. The centerpiece experience is The Last 100 Yards, a set of life-sized dioramas depicting significant battles in the Infantry’s history, including Yorktown, Antietam, Normandy, Ia Drang Valley and Iraq. Time your visit to coincide with the 11 a.m. or 2 p.m. tours of the World War II Street buildings. The buildings are authentic; the experience is immersive. Nearby is Inouye Field with ground that’s been sprinkled with soil from nine historic battlefields. Note: The museum’s stance isn’t neutral. It exists to honor infantry soldiers. Controversies aren’t ignored, but they are not highlighted.

Get maps and directions: National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center

#4 – Military supply centers are flashy and functional

Soldiers just-graduated from Army basic often visit Ranger Joe’s as a rite of passage. It is the best-known of the military supply shops that populate a strip of Victory Drive between I-185 and Fort Benning Road. The shops have much in common, but seek to differentiate themselves from the competition. Ranger Joe’s is a complex that includes a retail store, a coffee shop, a barber shop and a chiropractor offering $19 adjustments. On offer are uniforms, patches and insignias, tactical gear for military and law enforcement, flags and hats, and books and manuals. Plaques on the walls honor owner Paul Voorhees for service to soldiers. Less flashy, but more functional, is Commando Military Supply. Soldier customers tend to be more senior, relying on customer service that’s both nice and knowledgeable. The collection of Army manuals, for example, is more comprehensive than Ranger Joe’s.  Columbus Armory is the best choice for government-issued surplus gear – from World War I to today. The owner-in-the-store is David Brady, who served eight years in the Army, including time in the 101st Airborne Division during the Cold War 1980s. Brady is an authoritative retailer and collector. His typical customer is an active-duty soldier needing to replenish lost gear. His government-issued entrenching tool, for example, sells for $29.95 used; new on post it’s $118. Collectors sift through racks and bins of clothes, head gear, patches and pins. Ask Brady to tell you the story of the 1795 musket on the back wall.

Get maps and directions: Columbus Armory, Ranger Joe’s, Commando Military Supply,

#5 – Army graduation combines pageantry with patriotism and purpose

Fort Benning is a training center, graduating more than 100 classes of enlisted and officer men and women each year. Two brigades – the 194th and the 198th – train enlisted armor and infantry soldiers. Attend a Fort Benning graduation to encounter soldiers and their families at a key point in their military experience: they’ve left civilian life, trained for three to four months, and are prepared to join a combat unit. These classes graduate on Thursday and Friday mornings, most weeks of the year, at Inouye Field adjacent to the National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center. The 45-minute ceremony combines pageantry with patriotism and purpose. There is an Army band. A color guard. A combat fire team emerges behind colored smoke. You hear recorded explosions and machine-gun fire. Brief speeches are more like exhortations. The Soldier’s Creed is in call and response: “I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit.” Then the graduating soldiers in their dress blues and berets pass before a grandstand filled with family and friends, marching on ground that’s been sprinkled with soil from nine historic battlefields. Hooah. Arrive early for light security screening. For up-to-date schedules, call the Infantry Museum.

Get maps and directions: Inouye Field

#6 – You’ll need a half day to explore the National Civil War Naval Museum

Set aside a morning or afternoon to explore the National Civil War Naval Museum and its 40,000 square feet of Civil War ship hulls, artifacts, cannons, flags, and interpretive exhibits. The museum houses the largest surviving Confederate warship, the CSS Jackson, as well as the wreckage of the CSS Chattahoochee. Other exhibits include a full-scale replica of the USS Monitor’s famous turret. Its display of Civil War naval flags is the largest in the country. There is a replica of the berth deck, wardroom and captain’s cabin of Admiral Farragut’s flagship, USS Hartford,  famous in the Battle of Mobile Bay for Farragut’s appeal: Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. A self-guided tour brochure with smartphone audio is $5.Shop the smartly curated museum store.

Get maps and directions: National Civil War Naval Museum

#7 – An effective introduction to military conflicts at Columbus Museum

The Columbus Museum offers a quick, but effective, introduction to military conflict at key moments in local history. Well-annotated displays of artifacts begin with the Creek Wars of the early 1800s. Civil War artifacts include Red Jacket, the only known surviving example of the coat worn by the venerated Columbus Guards. The smell of oiled canvas still lingers in a Korea War-era tent used by troops at Fort Benning. Weapons of war include rare and important rifles, handguns, knives and swords. Portraits of Creek warriors and chiefs.

Get maps and directions: Columbus Museum

#8 – Andersonville museum honors all American POWS

Andersonville is best known for Camp Sumter, the Confederate military prison that housed 45,000 Union soldiers during the Civil War. Nearly 13,000 of the detainees died at Camp Sumter, and are buried at what is now a national military cemetery. Less well known is the superb National Prisoners of War Museum, operated by the National Park Service. The museum’s even-handed treatment of Civil War-era military prisons will surprise some visitors. The museum documents how 670,000 Civil War soldiers, both Union and Confederate, were detained in more than 100 prisons in the last years of the war. Nearly 58,000 died, the result of overcrowding, malnutrition, poor sanitation and disease. The museum’s treatment of POWs extends from the Revolutionary War to today, recognizing “all U.S. prisoners of war, across all times and places … across all wars.” About an hour’s drive from Columbus.

Get maps and directions: National Prisoners of War Museum

#9 – Visit burial sites of Revolutionary War veterans

Revolutionary War veteran Samuel Cooper settled in Columbus after winning 202.5 acres of Creek land in the 1827 land lottery. Researchers have identified 13 other Revolutionary War veterans who, like Cooper, ended up in Columbus decades after the War’s end. Cooper died in 1841, and is buried with his family in a small, well-tended, plot at an otherwise busy, commercial, intersection of Warm Springs and Miller roads, land he once owned. Two other Revolutionary War veterans, James Allen and George Wells Foster, are buried in Linwood Cemetery. Veteran Philemon Hodges, who won Cherokee land in the 1838 lottery, is buried in a cemetery in wooded area nearby the old Shiloh Methodist Church.

Get maps and directions: Cooper burial plot, Linwood Cemetery, Shiloh Methodist Church

#10 – Fort Benning as a backdrop for Hollywood movies

Fort Benning’s jump towers – technically, the 249-foot controlled descent towers – have been the centerpiece or backdrop for three Hollywood feature films. The first was in 1951, when Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin made Jumping Jacks. Both Lewis and Martin – or their stunt doubles – are seen being lifted and dropped from the towers. In 1968, the towers were the backdrop for John Wayne’s Green Berets. Most recently, they were a day and night backdrop for Mel Gibson’s We Were Soldiers. Indeed, this 2002 film used current-day Main Post venues in more than a dozen scenes, including: 1930s-era white stucco officers housing along S. Lumpkin Street, the sidewalks in front of Ridgeway Hall, the red-and-white checked tower and hangers at Lawson Army Airfield, the Bussey-family plantation home Riverside that today is home to the post’s commanding general, and Doughboy Stadium. Screen the film in your hotel or at home to see if you can identify other Fort Benning venues.

Get maps and directions: Fort Benning