Engineer Memoirs
A.
No, except to say that experiences in Korea (in which I was not involved other than at
general
in Japan) or in Vietnam (which I viewed from the major
headquarters) indicate that you can't win one war and pattern everything you do on it.
The situations are different; the aims are different; unit levels are different. So we can't
automatically say that what worked in World War II will work the next time, or that
something else will be better.
It's a matter of looking at each individual problem and gaining what we can from
experience. The experience is to be used for knowing what to look for and how to
make judgments. This is much more important than how something was done. I think
that sometimes in our schools and training we may lean too heavily on examples, which
may tend to become school solutions. These solutions are not always the best choices
under a different set of circumstances. I think we need a great deal of caution and
knowledge to keep from getting fixed ideas simply because of our past experience.
Q ..
Would this be true in terms of thinking about a possible ground war in Europe in the
future?
A
That is hard to answer. I'm talking about any engagement. I really can't think of a
ground war in Europe as being anywhere near the same as World War II, even over the
same territory. The advent of nuclear weapons and many other new developments
preclude this. I can't conceive of a war going on for11 months, for instance.
One of our big problems was the fact that there was no rotation system. Certainly, I
saw it in the engineer battalion, but it was even worse in the infantry units. The million-
dollar wound was the thing that kept you in the hospital 60 days or more, and that was
the ticket home. Whereas the Air Force had a mission rotation and the Navy also had
a rotation system.
There was no rotation system in the ground forces. Consequently, the general feeling
was that you were bound to get it if you stayed there long enough. In Vietnam that was
taken care of by the one-year rotation policy. While not the best way to fight a war, it
provides a very definite improvement in morale.
Q ..
Does that trace back to the World War II experience, do you think?
I assume that World War II had a lot to do with it, but I don't know that for a fact.
A
Q.
What about mobilization?
A
I wasn't close enough to that to express an opinion.
54
Previous Page
