Engineer Memoirs
A:
I heard it from my father. I heard it from many of his colleagues. The last time I heard
it was from [Major] General Charles [G.] Holle, whom I went to see over the Christmas
holidays. He told it to me once again. This is a true story, and it contains a very
important lesson, or principle, in construction in war. This is that you should use the
minimum amount of material needed to accomplish the mission, because everything is
at a premium in war.
Q:
When we get back to talking about your construction group in Vietnam, I am going to
raise this question, okay?
A:
All right. I'll tell you right now we violated that totally in Vietnam. But a very
important point is that Pershing, as a commander, was very attuned to these logistic
principles--the importance of austerity. There weren't enough resources. There weren't
enough engineer troops. There wasn't enough lumber. There wasn't enough of anything
in World War I.
Q:
I guess in lumber, in particular--
A:
Lumber, of course, in France--
Q:
The largest engineer unit in France was a forestry outfit.
A:
Right. Given the constraints on time and resources, they had to try to do everything
with as little material and effort as possible. It was pointless to build something that
would last for any length of time. My father used to say that this was one of the
problems with the engineers who came into the Army from civil life--the architects and
engineers who came into the Army from civil life during World War I. They were very
capable engineers, but they brought the concept of factors of safety from their civilian
experience. It was hard to get them to accept the concept that we didn't need factors
of safety in construction that was only supposed to last for six months or a year.
Q:
We never retained that lesson, did we, anywhere?
A:
Not recently. I think you would find it practiced in World War II, when there were
people in charge like [General Brehon B.] Somervell. Incidentally, he and my father
were very close friends from their time together in World War I. Those people brought
the lesson with them.
Q:
So the lesson did carry over.
A:
I think the top engineer and logistic leadership in World War II, for the most part, had
had that World War I experience--Somervell, [Brigadier General James H.] Stratton,
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