Engineer Memoirs
A:
And breakfast. That was the right thing to do, but it was very difficult to do that type
of thing when those were the only 40 men in the battalion that were doing it.
Q:
Where was your company commander?
A:
He was in bed, and he stayed in bed all day.
Q:
That's incredible.
A:
His name was Bishop. He had been a Higgins boat commander in the landing on
Tarawa, he'd been shot at, he'd been scared ever since, and he never did anything. He
was a sugar beet farmer from Montana. We'd have meetings with him about things we
had to do and he wouldn't make decisions. Then the lieutenants would get together and
decide what to do.
Q:
They would have a leadership committee.
A:
A committee--
Q:
To run a military company.
A:
The exec ranked us, although in the engineer organization in World War II there was
not an exec. The TO&E [table of organization and equipment] had the company
commander, three platoon leaders, and an administrative officer. The company
commander was a captain. The three platoon leaders were first lieutenants and the
administrative officer was a second lieutenant. The engineer company did not have an
exec. In the infantry the second senior officer was the exec of the company. But in the
engineers, no.
[Lieutenant] Tommy Thompson, who was the administrative officer, might have been
senior to us, but the three platoon leaders would not accede to him the position of
second in command because that wasn't according to the TO&E. Furthermore, he was
an artillery retread and didn't know anything about engineering, whereas the three
platoon leaders were engineer officers. In fact, I don't think that Thompson even wore
engineer insignia. I can't remember that for sure. It was a bad scene.
Q:
And that's the first unit you saw in the Army?
A:
That was the first unit I served in, and I didn't know what to do. I knew that they
weren't doing well, because I had been around with Lee and visited many units. From
that experience I had an overall perspective of good and bad units. Having gone
everywhere with Lee--to the Advance Section, to Le Havre, to Cherbourg, to the
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