Engineer Memoirs
A:
They're the same kind of thing. Republican administrations, until Reagan, tended to
contract in the military sector.
North Central Division, 19701973
Q:
That's right. Now we're getting to something I've been dying to ask you about
because, you know, I'm having trouble myself coming to terms with their putting you
in civil works at that stage in your career. I'd like to know why that happened.
A:
General Clarke picked out the generals that he thought had some ability to put in charge
of his divisions.
Every Chief, incidentally, comes to this. If you look at the number of divisions and you
also look at the requirements that are filled frequently by engineer general officers
throughout the Army, there are always more vacancies than there are engineer generals
to fill them. The Chief of Engineers has to hunt around for people to fill all of the slots.
Of course, Clarke had observed me there when I was the deputy director of Military
Construction. He knew that he had problems in the North Central Division [NCD]. I
don't want to go into that in too much detail. I'm willing to characterize the problem,
but I'd rather not talk about all the personalities involved.
Q:
Okay, as you wish.
A:
I'll say this. The North Central Division had not had a consistent administration. They'd
had two division engineers that took short tours there and then went to Vietnam. They
had been brigadier generals, and I think they felt they had to go to Vietnam to be
selected for further promotion. Neither was selected.
Then they had had an interregnum of the Chicago District engineer being the division
engineer. They had problems. The division didn't have a sense of direction, to be
honest.
They had another problem: the workload was way off. Two things caused that. One,
that part of the world is pretty well developed. You don't need to build a lot. The other
thing was that without a sense of direction, the division planning effort wasn't bringing
projects to the point where they could be authorized and built. The division was
wandering. They were studying the daylights out of things, but they were never
reaching a conclusion. Not that they should have been making up projects, but even the
ones that were practical were not getting to the point where they could be built.
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