Fort Jackson’s commanding general, SC native gets new assignment

Noah Feit
·2 min read

Brig. Gen. Milford H. Beagle Jr., a South Carolina native who has served as the commander at Fort Jackson since 2018, has been given a new assignment, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Beagle will leave the Army installation in Columbia to be the commanding general of the 10th Mountain Division (Light) at Fort Drum in New York, according to the Pentagon.

Fort Jackson’s next commanding general, who will be in charge of the U.S. Army Training Center, will be Brig. Gen. Patrick R. Michaelis, the Department of Defense said.

Michaelis is coming from Fort Knox, where he served as deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command at the base in Kentucky.

Brig. Gen. Milford ‘Beags’ Beagle Jr., Fort Jackson and Army Training Center commander, receives the unit colors from Maj. Gen. Malcolm Frost, commander of the Center for Initial Military Training, on Friday during a change of command ceremony at Victory Field on Fort Jackson.
Brig. Gen. Milford ‘Beags’ Beagle Jr., Fort Jackson and Army Training Center commander, receives the unit colors from Maj. Gen. Malcolm Frost, commander of the Center for Initial Military Training, on Friday during a change of command ceremony at Victory Field on Fort Jackson.

Information on when Beagle will leave and Michaelis will officially take command was not available, but Fort Jackson officials said that news will be made public once the logistics have been worked out.

Beagle has served as the 51st commander of Fort Jackson.

The posting in New York is a return for Beagle, who served as the deputy commander for support at Fort Drum before coming to Fort Jackson.

Beagle is an Enoree native who graduated from Woodruff High School and attended South Carolina State University as a student-athlete in track, according to a profile in the Laurens County Advertiser.

He turned down an opportunity to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y, and enrolled at S.C. State University in Orangeburg, The State previously reported. That’s where Beagle joined the ROTC program at the urging of two friends, according to Fort Drum public affairs. It was after he graduated in 1990 that he first received training at Fort Jackson, Beagle said.

Brig. Gen. Patrick R. Michaelis will be the next commander at Fort Jackson, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
Brig. Gen. Patrick R. Michaelis will be the next commander at Fort Jackson, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Michaelis is a distinguished military graduate from Texas A&M University and was commissioned a second lieutenant of Armor in 1993, according to the Army.

His previous assignments include command and staff positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other domestic postings, including at stint at the United States Military Academy at West Point, according to the Army.

Fort Jackson is the nation’s largest military basic training base with more than 50,000 recruits assigned there each year.

The base’s commander has more “direct responsibility” for training soldiers than any other officer in the U.S. Army, said Maj. Gen. Malcolm Frost, who commands the Army Center for Initial Military Training.