The fort’s renaming placed his name on a permanent military installation in a way that the Medal of Honor ceremony could not: not a ceremony, not a grave marker, but a living military base where soldiers train and serve. The name persists through daily use, in addresses and orders and conversations, in ways that keep the association active rather than archival.
## The Croix de Guerre in Context
The specific award France gave Henry Johnson — the Croix de Guerre avec Palme — requires some contextual explanation, because the distinction between this award and France’s other military honors has been blurred in some accounts.
The Croix de Guerre was established on April 8, 1915, by the French National Assembly, specifically for the First World War. It was expanded in subsequent wars. The decoration comes in four levels, distinguished by the device attached to the ribbon: a star (étoile) for lower levels, a palm (palme) for the highest. The palm was awarded on the authority of an Army or Army Group citation rather than a lower-level unit citation.
Johnson’s Croix de Guerre avec Palme was therefore the highest form of the award. The French military orders accompanying it used the specific language of an Army-level citation.
The Legion of Honor — the Légion d’honneur — is France’s highest national order, established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802 and awarded to French and foreign nationals for extraordinary service to France. It is distinct from the Croix de Guerre, which is a campaign decoration rather than a national order.