Fort Benning arson shakes community

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Fort Benning arson shakes community
By Walter Putnam - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Mar 13, 2009 8:26:49 EDT

FORT BENNING, Ga. — Most of the Army personnel and civilian employees at Fort Benning had long since gone home when the urgent call came on a Friday night in February: One of the post’s historic buildings was on fire.

Post police officers arrived at the Judge Advocate General’s office first, and forced their way in to see paper burning in piles on several desks. They grabbed fire extinguishers, but were driven out by dense smoke.

Thirty-five firefighters battled the blaze, but the 10,000-square-foot building was reduced within hours to smoldering, blackened ruins in the first known arson of a JAG office in the United States.

The Feb. 6 fire shocked this military community of 100,000 officers, reservists and civilian workers and their families.

The landmark building was the second-oldest at Fort Benning and dated back a century. Its small, tiered courtroom hosted the court-martial of Lt. William Calley, who was convicted in 1971 of killing 22 civilians in the Vietnamese village of My Lai in 1968.


Rest of article at: http://armytimes.com/news/2009/03/ap_fire_031309/%2e