Engineer Memoirs
I thought Lee was extraordinarily capable. He was very helpful to me. I learned a lot
from him. Those two-and-a-half months with him, I learned a lot about the whole
logistics of war. He was a good guy, but since he wasn't completely skillful in handling
his relations with people, he didn't come out of the war with as fine a reputation as he
deserved.
Q:
That's unfortunate when that happens. He had a terrible nickname. I don't know if he
was called it behind his back by his staff or--
A:
"Jesus Christ Himself"?
Q:
Yeah.
A:
Well, his close personal staff was very loyal to him. When you got a little more
removed, there was more of this feeling about him.
Q:
You went to a combat battalion?
A:
Yes. I went to the 1282d Engineer Combat Battalion, which was training in England.
Toward the end of the war, the Army had taken quite a few people who had been in
antiaircraft units and moved them over into other units, since once we achieved air
superiority, we didn't need these antiaircraft units any more. One of these units, the
1282d, had been formed up at Camp Van Dorn in Mississippi. Over half the unit was
people who had transferred into this battalion at Van Dorn. They had not completed
what we would call advanced individual training. They had gone through basic
organizational training, but they had not received training in most of the engineer skills.
They had arrived over in England around Christmas time and I joined them on New
Year's Eve. This was right after the Battle of the Bulge, and the Army was very
concerned about replacements for the units that had been overrun. The 1282d Engineer
Battalion spent the entire month of January in infantry training.
We went down on the rifle range for a week, slept in pup tents in the snow. The
temperature was about 20 degrees. The rest of the month was spent in scouting and
patrolling and local security, all the infantry skills. However, the theater decided not to
break up the unit and use the enlisted men and the NCOs [noncommissioned officers]
as individual replacements. Then we were able to go ahead with our engineer training,
our bridge training.
We made two trips to the Bailey bridge school that had been set up in England. We
went by truck and spent a week building bridges. Units were cycled through the school
in rapid succession.
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