Engineer Memoirs
Q ..
How about
you were there?
A ..
Well, I certainly knew them and talked with them on occasion.
Q ..
Did that begin friendships with, say,
that lasted?
A ..
No, not really. We weren't that close.
Q ..
Do you think, in view of what you said earlier, about your World War II experiences
and their applicability, that you had that same point of view in
A ..
all the answers in 1947.
No. We
Q ..
You had all the answers. So really, later experiences gave you the perspective that you
expressed
in our discussion.
A ..
Yes. The atomic bomb had been developed, but it was an aerial delivery weapon in
those days, so the situation was different. The tendency was to think that the next war
was going to be similar, but with the Russians.
Q ..
Can you mention a few more specific things that you thought were important to stress
to the
at Fort Belvoir who would be infantry division engineers in the future,
in view of your relatively recent combat experience?
A ..
I think I emphasized the requirement for the division engineer to be both a staff officer
and a commander-how to do both jobs and their importance. There was a lot of
discussion about separating the two jobs, and I felt very strongly that they should not
be separated. So I emphasized how I felt both jobs could be done adequately by the
same individual, and the advantages of a dual assignment rather than two separate
assignments.
Q ..
Can I ask you for some more specifics on how he would do that?
A ..
I think I'd have difficulty being very specific at this point in time. Each of the students
was required to prepare a kind of a term paper. With my encouragement, one of the
officers wrote a paper on that subject, based on a survey questionnaire [completed by]
a number of people who had served as division engineers. Not too surprisingly, his
[conclusions] came out the same way that I'd been thinking.
Q ..
Does that survive? That paper?
A
I suspect if you look somewhere in the Engineer Library there might be a copy.
60
Previous Page
