FORT LIBERTY — Fort Liberty soldiers and community members welcomed a new commander Thursday who will help oversee the day-to-day operations of the most populated U.S. military installation in the world.
Col. John Wilcox, the installation’s first garrison commander under its new name of Fort Liberty, handed the garrison’s colors to incoming commander Col. K. Chad Mixon at a command change ceremony on the post’s main parade field.
Wilcox is headed to Florida to join the U.S. Special Operations Command staff, while Mixon returns to Fort Liberty after attending the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Outgoing commander
Patrick Appleman, director of the U.S. Army Installation Management Command-Readiness, hosted Thursday’s ceremony.
Appleman said that during the past two years that Wilcox has led the installation, he was involved in the post being renamed from Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty, and managed an “Army-level” crisis of failures of the ventilation system in the Smoke Bomb Hill barracks shortly after taking command.