Engineer Memoirs
years, getting to know most of the officers in the Corps while handling personnel assignments.
That a lso turned out to be a valuable staff experience.
I had had an opportunity in both public works and military construction in dealing with the other
services, and now I was going to get my first taste of staff duty and personnel management, a
completely different field. I'd been in the supply business in Europe, and now the personnel
business.
To be assigned to the personnel division was a compliment. Why? Simply because they had the
choice of all officers available for assignment. They wouldn't bring in somebody they didn't
want.
Initially I wasn't too sure about this type of assignment, but it turned out to be excellent. Once
again I found myself working for people who were excellent managers and supervisors with the
ability to express themselves well. I was to enter a job which would educate me about the Army
and its personnel policies. In time I knew the records of almost all the engineer officers. I knew
what they were doing and what jobs were best for each. Consequently, I had an influence on a
lot of people's lives. I selected those to attend civilian graduate and military schools and was
responsible for the duty assignments of all lieutenant colonels and lower.
Ed Gibson was a captain working for me at the time. K.T. Sawyer, lieutenant colonel at the time,
was there, and Colonel Bob Ploger, who handled the military program. Steven Hamner, a
brigadier general, ran the total personnel office, military and civilian.
The first Saturday in the job I got called to the Chief's office. I'd never met General Itschner
before. The Corps was considering sending the dredge Henry Bacon and an engineer company
to the area and he wanted to know a bit about it. I felt fortunate to meet the Chief of Engineers
early on in this assignment. Incidentally, I had known the dredge when I was in Savannah-its
home district.
The tour in OCE, though, was another segment of broadening the base of experience. I
recommend an assignment in the personnel business, but be prepared wherever you go to ask
about your next assignment.
I felt my mission was to do everything I could to give every officer the best chance to become a
general. Every assignment was based on what was the best for the officer within the needs of the
Army. In peacetime I think the approach is crucial to assignments personnel because they are
really training an officer to have the most value during stressful situations. If they capitalize on
individual strengths and assign him to a job that broadens those, he's going to be better than if
he is just kept doing the same thing over and over again.
In considering a captain's assignment, we'd start with the idea that we were going to get him to
Leavenworth. Now, if he was in Leavenworth we were going to assign him with the idea to get
into War College. We looked upon the school systems as the stepping stones to growth. Half the
officers make Leavenworth, and a fourth of them make the War College. If an officer gets through
all those, then he has a chance to make stars. We studied everybody's record when he'd come u p
for assignments. We'd look at what he'd done, what he needed to do, and his preferences.
Actually, the preference card was important. Pretty soon the officers began to realize that their
preference cards should be built around what they thought they needed.
One civilian handled the colonels' assignments-Percy was his name, but all full colonels'
assignments were approved by then Colonel Ploger.
So that was a three-year hitch. I spent one year doing the assignments, one year in the policy
branch, where we wrote the policies and did studies to foresee the personnel requirements,
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