Enaineer Memoirs
Legislative Liaison had to get the requirement into the right format for presentations to the
Congress by the president We worked night and day on a plan to send some 200,000 soldiers to
General Westmoreland as he requested; 19,000 were to be in the advance party. On the 31st of
March 1968, President Johnson came on TV, and he announced he was sending in the 19,000.
He also said that night he was not going to run for reelection and never mentioned the remaining
troops. We sent the 19,000, but we never did send the remainder.
There were frequent political bombshells popping up when you didn't expect them. The Secretary
of the Army had a real situation on his hands with the
problem. Bob Jordan, General
Counsel for the Army, personally took this project aboard. General Penney and he worked
literally weeks and months on that one problem, to try to get it settled down to whether the Army
would keep the
rifle. Of course, our rifle manufacturers were all over it because they
wanted to make the weapons.
Then little things often got important. The chairman of the Armed Services Committee in the
House of Representatives was Mendel Rivers, a dynamic and powerful man from South Carolina.
He had a retired marine general as counsel for the committee. Rivers could and did bring pressure
on the Secretary of the Army through his committee. He'd call the secretary for a hearing, and
if it was a tough subject he'd have the whole committee present.
Roger Courier of our office was a close personal friend of Mr. Rivers and would keep us posted
on matters of importance to the chairman and his staffers.
I got a call one day from a certain staffer who said, "You'd better do something about that bag
boy situation over at Fort Myer." He said, "The chairman is very interested." The bag boys had
become impolite and destructive in filling patrons' bags, but they were part of President
Johnson's Youth Improvement Program. These were predominantly minorities, so we had to be
careful that we just didn't summarily get them out. Besides that, we didn't know who was going
to do the work if they left. Roger Currier checked into it and reported that the chairman was not
interested.
Pretty soon I got another phone call from the staffer saying, "What have you done about the bag
boys?" I told him we were working on it and I'd get back to him. Well, this time it happened that
Currier was going to go to South Carolina with Mr. Rivers. In the meantime, I thought I'd better
do something about this. I'd better have a plan. So we got the Army staffers together with
representatives of the CG at Fort Myer, and we came up with a plan of what we'd do if necessary.
I mentioned it to the chairman and
Roger Currier came back from this trip, said, "Don't
he didn't say anything."
About a week later, a letter came floating in signed by Mr. Rivers to the effect that for over four
weeks or so nothing had happened, so Secretary [Stanley] Resor was to appear before the full
committee on a certain day. Secretary of the Army Resor knew nothing about all this, so I had to
explain the whole thing to him. Fortunately, we had a draft letter telling the chairman that by
Monday morning the problem would be eliminated. Soldiers would do the bagging for a short
period of time while this situation was better resolved.
He sent the letter, but he still had to appear for the hearing. By the time the secretary had arrived,
Mr. Rivers had received the letter. The hearing was warm and friendly with accolades for the
Secretary of the Army for having been so positive and efficient in solving this problem.
General Penney had let me handle this while he was taking care of other issues. Mr. Resor is a
wonderful man. We still get cards from him every year, and I see him occasionally.
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