Engineer Memoirs
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We were not getting any new equipment. In fact, much of our better vehicles and
A
weapons were taken from us and sent to Vietnam. As a result, we had to put a
great deal of emphasis on maintenance. In this connection, I had one advantage
over the other four divisions in Europe. My division was assigned the mission of
augmenting the Berlin contingent. This amounted to sending a battalion of
infantry, 25 tanks, and 25 armored personnel carriers to Berlin for a 60-day
period.
The Berlin command could draw on counterpart funds. With these funds and the
excellent German civilian mechanics in Berlin, we were able, in a 60-day period,
to completely overhaul the battalion's equipment, including its attached tanks and
armored personnel carriers. We put all our worst weapons, vehicles, tanks, and
A P C s [armored personnel carriers] from the entire division into the force we sent
to Berlin. Sixty days later, the unit would come back with refurbished equipment.
In fact, some of it was better than new because the mechanics made a number of
the parts in their machine shops, which were better than the spare parts designed
and fabricated in the States.
Q ..
But aside from this windfall, didn't you need to spend a great deal of effort on
maintenance?
A ..
Yes. To put more emphasis on maintaining our equipment, I designed a concept
which we called TRAIN-MAIN. The idea was to devote as much time and
command supervision to maintenance as was usually given to training. First, I let
the commanders know that they would be rated on a dual standard, 50 percent on
their ability to train their units and 50 percent on their ability to maintain their
unit's equipment. This caused the commanders to shift some of their better
subordinates into maintenance jobs and to establish training courses on how to care
for equipment. Each company would train for a week, with everyone training
except those needed to repair or keep equipment going, and then it would maintain
for a week, with everyone turning a hand to taking care of the equipment. During
the train week, commanders had the opportunity of discovering better mechanics
than those assigned to the job. It also forced commanders at every echelon to
supervise the maintenance, something which had not been done before. The added
incentives to do better at maintaining, because it would be reflected on the
commander's efficiency reports, plus the command emphasis at all levels proved
to be highly effective The maintenance scores awarded us by the USAREUR
[United States Army, Europe] equipment inspectors shot up dramatically.
We did not, of course, slight our training. At least half of the time was devoted
to it because we participated in maneuvers. But the increased knowledge the
commanders gained about how to maintain equipment paid big dividends. They
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