Engineer Memoirs
While I had known General Westmoreland and we'd had some brief association, I had
never worked directly for him and certainly did not know him well. However, we did
establish a good working relationship. In the numerous discussions I had with the
services about who would get priority for what, what project would be done first, and
how the resources would be allocated, never once did he fail to back me up completely
in the decisions that I reached. I remember vividly spending all of one day in the Da
Nang area at his instruction trying to reach some settlement of the conflicting interests
between the Air Force and the Marines over the development of Da Nang Air Base.
The basic question was whether priority effort would be on the additional runway,
which the Air Force wanted, or on parking aprons and other facilities for the Marine
aircraft that the Marines wanted. Like Solomon, I "split the baby."
This was a constant problem throughout my 20 months in Vietnam. We were given a
lump sum for each service in the theater with the authority to determine our own
requirements. The remaining problem was allocating the construction capability rather
than getting authority for a project.
The first task for me and [General] Dan Raymond, who was already there and who
became the deputy director of construction, and the other people in the construction
directorate, was to get a handle on what each service required. We then had to work
up an integrated priority list so that the resources of the civilian
working
under the Department of the Navy, and the resources of the available military
construction forces could be allocated properly.
Generally, Navy
worked in the I Corps area for the Navy and Marines, and the
Army worked in the other corps areas for the Army and the Air Force. But there was
some intermingling of units. On at least one occasion, Air Force construction-type
detachments called "Red Horse" units, Army engineer units, and the civilian contractor
were all working on the same air base that had, at that point, a very high priority to
become operational.
This allocation of resources was the primary purpose of the construction directorate
and, in my opinion, was absolutely essential to getting on with the program. I would
say that this was probably my major contribution to activity in Vietnam. Not too long
after, in July, I was appointed the J-4 of the command but continued to exercise
general guidance to the construction directorate which General Raymond then took
over as director of construction.
Q ..
In his interview, General Raymond pointed out President Johnson's decision not to call
up the National Guard and Reserves, depriving the Army of its normal construction
base.
A
And experience.
Previous Page
