"We didn't start the fire..."

Let me start by clarifying that this is NOT Patrick's office. Okay, so at about 9 p.m. Friday night the Fort Benning JAG office was destroyed by a fire. This building was the second oldest building on Fort Benning so the fire ripped through it pretty quickly.




It took literally 1 million gallons of water to extinguish the flames and as you can see from the first picture below, it was still smoldering on Saturday. We couldn't even get a good shot from the front because it was too smokey. Thankfully since it happened late on a Friday night no one was injured.

The JAG office is the legal hub of Fort Benning, providing legal assistance to all of the Soldiers, family members and military retirees. The only attorneys that were not housed in this building are the ones who work in the Trial Defense Services office, which is where Patrick works. TDS is located in a different building in order to keep the prosecution and defense counsels separate.

As I mentioned the building was quite old. It was built in the early 1900s and it was originally owned by Aurthur Bussey, the man who owned a plantation which he later sold to the federal government to build Fort Benning. The building also served as the Fort Benning headquarters until 1935 and until Friday, it was stop number 12 on the historic trail. The fire is believed to be the result of arson, but the incident is still under investigation.








Finally, just 'cause she's cute, here is Lauren on Saturday looking precious and ready to go see the crime scene. :)