Engineer Memoirs
The camp was south of the DMZ [demilitarized zone], but north of Uijongbu, up north
of Seoul. They had a rough time at first, but they got organized finally.
Among other things, the 7th Division gave them a camp area which looked great when
everything was frozen. But when it thawed out, it turned out to be a quagmire. So they
had to move the whole company in the midst of working.
Getting aggregate for the asphalt was a huge problem. We ended up finding a stream
filled with cobbles that ranged all the way up to a foot in diameter. Instead of having
a quarry, we just dozed this material out of the stream.
There was one problem with it. It had too much sand in it to get the right gradation
when it was put through the rock crusher. We built something called a grizzly--a
sloped grid of steel rails. We dropped the material from the streambed onto the grizzly.
The sand would drop through between the rails and only the rock would go into the
jaws of the crusher.
By this method we got aggregate that was well graded and had enough fines. This was
the problem. To get good strong asphalt concrete, you have to have five to six percent
binder; otherwise it ravels out and comes up. If you don't have enough fines to absorb
the asphalt, five to six percent is too rich in asphalt, the pavement oozes. The secret is
in the fine fraction. We managed to solve that after several weeks. Once they got going
they did an outstanding job.
There is one thing that we did that was very important. In the 2d Engineer Group at
that time, there were three battalions: the 44th, the 76th, and the 802d. As the result of
what Charlie Steel had done, the 44th had the reputation of being the best of these
battalions, at least as far as getting work done. I think that was maintained.
Some years later, my West Point roommate, Ken Cooper, commanded the 76th. He
claims that at that time the 44th had sunk to the bottom, which indeed it may have. I
don't know anything about that except what Ken has told me. I only know what it was
like when I was there.
For this asphalt paving mission, we had a company of my battalion that was up in the
7th Division area and a company out of the 76th Battalion up in the 2d Division area.
In each area, the combat battalion of the division was supposed to lay the base course,
and the construction battalion was supposed to lay the hot mix paving.
Neither combat battalion did very well. They had all kinds of excuses--equipment and
so forth. So there wasn't very much base course being laid. We would go to the group
meeting, and there hadn't been much hot mix laid. The minute I realized that this wasn't
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