With this new way of business we went into high gear. We hired every ship
available to move ammo to England and food to Italy. We formed provisional
truck companies from all the divisions and other units in Germany. We moved as
much as we could by rail. And where these assets were not sufficient, we hired
commercial movers from France, Germany, Belgium, and Holland to take up the
slack. Getting funds to pay for the civilian ships, rail cars, and trucks was another
difficult problem which we also solved in an unorthodox way.
One of my jobs as the chief of FRELOC was to sell as much as possible of the
unmovable objects, such as barracks, warehouses, and hospitals, to French
businessmen. We were given certain guidelines as to pricing. Here again, one of
my young lawyers had a good idea. He took a team of his fellow officers to
France and put on dog and pony shows, showing French businessmen what
bargains they were getting. When a deal was struck, the purchaser had to put up
a deposit. We used these deposits to pay the movers, promising them full payment
when we received our money from the purchasers. We were able to get more for
the properties than our guidelines allowed and this made our relationship with the
Pentagon and GAO smoother.
Another of our problems was complying with General O'Meara's orders that
everything be moved. Rather than try to convince him that certain types of
material, for example, sand and gravel, was not worth moving, we simply had
dump truck companies haul the material into land fills west of the Rhine. We
moved just about everything we could. For example, we even moved several
expensive golf greens to German golf courses. We rolled up the turf, transported
the greens to Germany, and had them laid on top of the poorer greens there.
Another difficult problem requiring solution was the central computer to handle
supplies from the U.S. to the troops in Europe. There was a large first generation
computer in Orleans which was simply not worth moving since second generation
computers were then available. We went to the IBM headquarters in New York
and learned that they were experimenting with a third generation computer. We
were able to get approval from the Pentagon to purchase the third generation
computer. However, there was a great deal of controversy as to where it should
be located. Rather than wait for a final decision, I had the computer and its
ancillary equipment installed in 10 rail cars and placed temporarily in a tunnel in
western Germany. The idea looked good on paper but proved difficult to execute.
The problem was that diesel fumes from the generators needed to run and cool the
computers settled on the computer's storage drums and disks. As a result, all sorts
of spurious errors began to occur. However, one of our ingenious planners
designed a set of air filters which we placed on the diesel engines in the tunnel.
Fortunately, the scheme worked.
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