Engineer Memoirs
We have had some factory representatives, but we didn't have, as far as I know--I'm
not familiar with the procurement contract--we didn't have a specific standard
arrangement that every item of equipment would be accompanied into the country by
a set of people from the manufacturer fully qualified to introduce the equipment. This
is what I think should be written into the contract.
Now we have a maintenance contractor who has skilled maintenance people. But these
are no substitute for factory representatives. They know this type of equipment, but
they may or may not have worked on a specific item. For example, the stabilization
plants are [made by] Cedarapids. We need a man from that company to come and tell
us how to run this equipment. This is a big, complicated piece of machinery, and we
don't have anybody that's familiar with the particular piece of equipment. We're
overcoming these difficulties, and the idea of getting this machinery that's particularly
capable is a marvelous one.
I am less sure that I agree with some of the items that we've gotten that have close
analogies to military equipment. For example, the 600 CFM air compressors are fine
pieces of equipment, but I'm not sure that I agree with having spent money to buy
them. I'd rather use the money to get equipment for which there is no military parallel.
One exception to this is the 5,000-gallon water distributors. In this case the MCA
equipment is so much better than anything we have in the military that it's not really
comparable.
On the subject of morale, the experience down here is that hard work out in the sticks
away from the cities is the best thing for morale. The units that have the best spirit, the
men that seem most satisfied, are people that are out working on a fire base or some
other remote site. There are several things about this. One is that they are left to their
own resources. They don't have the barracks "spit and polish" and all that. Another
thing is that they are close knit out there; they rely on each other. When you put them
in a town, they go off to town and get into trouble. They're not as happy getting into
trouble as they are out working. This has been our experience.
I won't talk much about maintenance. The first and foremost problem we have in
maintenance is that our whole army isn't adequately trained in this subject. Our
operators aren't, our junior officers aren't. I guess nobody is adequately trained.
After a person has been over here working on a problem for 8 or 10 months, he knows
an awful lot about it. But as people come over, they don't know enough. There is no
question that it's a highly complicated problem that requires a great deal of skill and
knowledge and ability to get right. We are amateurs at it until we are about ready to go
home.
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