Ernest Graves
Q:
That's right.
A:
There's a lot of good material in there on how you do things, and what was done right
and what was done wrong. But I don't think either Bob Ploger or Carroll Dunn
presumed to write on the larger issue as to whether we should have had a completely
different approach to the level of things, on the basis that since the troops were only
going to be in this place for a year, they could have put up with a lot tougher situation
than we tried to provide.
Q:
Is that your own personal viewpoint?
A:
Well, it is. I'll give you an example of what happened in the 9th Division which
illustrates this.
They had the concept for Dong Tam, and tremendous effort went into this. Tremendous
effort went into things like the TOC--tactical operations center--which was a really
fine bunker. Tremendous effort went into the officers club. They flew in electrical
fixtures from Hong Kong and everything else.
The brigades of the 9th Division that were the cutting edge of this operation were
almost never in Dong Tam. Toward the end, they shifted the whole construction effort
to building fire bases out where they operated to provide more secure places for the
troops to stay during operations and when they were having short stand-downs.
They went away from the notion that they were going to stand down the battalions in
Dong Tam. Basically, I think it was a question, to an extent, of efficiency. If they made
more secure places for them out where they were operating, made these bases a little
more livable, instead of having them just plain mud holes, if the troops could stay out
there, a lot less effort was spent moving them back and forth.
All I'm arguing is, if a person is going to be somewhere for only a year and he's kept
busy and he is well led, you don't have to have much luxury. You can get by.
Dong Tam required a high-voltage electrical system. It was a real chore because we
didn't have the people that knew how to do this high-voltage electrical work. The
generators were a difficulty because they complicated things, and so forth and so on.
There was a high-voltage detachment which had some skilled people in it, but we had
only one-tenth the people to do this high-voltage work that we needed to get the job
done in any reasonable length of time.
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