Ernest Graves
paying somebody off, because they left stuff out unattended, and it didn't get sabotaged
or stolen.
I guess if you examine the division of work between troops and contractors carefully,
you could probably argue that some of the work was malassigned. But I think, overall,
the concept of having them over there was good. At least if you've decided to have a
certain level. I personally think that we went overboard in a lot of the support
arrangements we made out there.
Q:
That we overbuilt for our own forces, you mean?
A:
Right. Up at An Khe they built an incredible cantonment for the lst Cavalry Division.
About the time they got it finished, the lst Cav went south and never went back. I think
a careful analysis of all the different division cantonments that were made would show
that it was mostly a waste of effort.
Did you ever look at [Major] General [Robert R.] Ploger's book2 on U.S. Army
Q:
engineers in Vietnam?
A:
Only briefly.
Q:
I just wanted to ask you about what he identified as the major problems for
engineers--unstable soil, which you talked about--the mud, and the lack of building
materials. Do you more or less agree with that?
A:
I would agree with that, although it seems to me that the soil conditions when I was
there were far more important.
An amusing contrast--when I was in Korea, my battalion was right next to the engineer
depot, and I had a tremendous advantage over the other two battalions of the 2d
Engineer Group--the 76th and the 802d--because I could get stuff and they couldn't.
When I got to Vietnam, my group, the 34th Engineers, was down in the delta, whereas
the 79th Group and the 159th Group were up much closer.
The 159th was in Long Binh. They were right next to the supplies. And the 79th was
in Bien Hoa, so it was fairly close. I was at the other end of nowhere. I did have a
liaison officer up in Long Binh working the supply problem.
Major General Robert R. Ploger, Vietnam Studies: U.S. Army Engineers 19651970 (Washington,
2
D.C.: Department of the Army, 1974, 1989).
115
Previous Page
