Carroll H. Dunn
peacetime procurement of real estate. There were no people trained to do that, so we
took any people then we could find and made them real estate experts overnight.
Obviously, they weren't.
Q ..
What would you say about the quality of the engineer troops that were in Vietnam?
A
My view is that the early troops were fine. As I have indicated, every unit was turned
over in its entirety by a yearly rotation. This very much decreased their usefulness
during that rotation period. Gradually, of course, this effectiveness increased. As far as
I am concerned, the training of the individual soldier or the individual officer was all
right. However, essentially all of our replacements came in at the lowest level, both
officers and enlisted men. That was the replacement system.
Q.
Did you have much contact with Major General [Robert R.] Ploger when he was in
Vietnam?
A ..
Yes. Ploger was the USARV [U.S. Army Vietnam] engineer, just as the Navy and Air
Force each had an engineer. I had a good deal of contact with him in relation to the
Army's requirements and capabilities. For instance, I got from him the Army's
construction requirements and issued to the Army-in effect, to him-the construction
directives that allowed them to expend funds for the approved projects from their list
of need. At the same time, we allocated the construction effort, whether it be an Army
troop effort or whether it was to be done by the civilian contractor. This required
continued liaison.
His responsibility was to determine Army requirements, and mine was both to approve
those and to fit them into the overall program. Once assigned the mission and the
authority to build, where Army troops were involved, he furnished the resources to do
the actual construction.
Q.
Did you have much basis for assessing the allied engineer troops that were in Vietnam?
A
The only allied troops were the Vietnamese and the Koreans. I was responsible for
advising the Vietnamese engineer element. As a result, I kept in fairly close contact
with what they were doing. I had been familiar, from my Korean assignment, with the
Korean engineers and their capabilities. Essentially, they satisfactorily executed those
things which were assigned to them. The major facilities were provided by using either
the contractor or U.S. units. Essentially, the allied troops took care of themselves as
far as housing.
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