Engineer Memoirs
Personally, I did not have a bruise. The reason was simple. I was sitting in a swivel chair with
its back toward the front of the bus. I was looking out the back of the bus, so to speak, and
when the impact occurred that chair just swiveled so that all of the impact went right into the
back of the chair, which was cushioned. Congressman Flowers, who was sitting across from
me, came flying over the table toward me.
It was a bad experience that took a lot of zip out of us for a few days. Then we had the
investigations because of the people involved.
finally submitted to a physical exam to learn, as I recall, that he did have
General
a slight fracture of his shoulder. Cross was okay, Lord came out of it all right. The most
serious passenger injury was the lady [Mrs. Nichols] whose foot was broken badly.
Early on after I became Deputy Chief, General Gribble asked me to go to Italy and Saudi
Arabia, take a look at that situation, and see how we were handling it. Colonel Torrey
Williams, Mediterranean Division engineer in Livomo, Italy, in preparation for our visit,
developed his plan for managing the Saudi program. I was accompanied on that trip by Fred
McNeely and Lee Garrett. I'd known Fred from my Goose Bay, Eastern Ocean District days
and in Civil Works. He knew the military construction business from top to bottom. I had
some earlier association with both Garrett and McNeely, but I really got to know them on this
trip. They were truly outstanding assets to the Corps' team. The years to come proved their
worth over and over.
Lee and Fred certainly had much more in-depth questions for Colonel Williams about how
the plan was going to operate than I did, but I came to one conclusion during the outstanding
briefing. Colonel Williams wasn't moving his headquarters to Riyadh fast enough. So on the
way out to the car to leave, I congratulated Torrey on his great briefing. Also, I said I was
going to recommend to the Chief of Engineers that the date of 1 July 1977 when Williams
wanted to put the flag in Riyadh be moved to 1 July 1976, which was ten months hence and
a full year sooner than he'd planned. I said, "Now, you will have an opportunity to rebut that
to the Chief, but that's what I intend to recommend."
The logic for the position was important. While we managed earlier overseas programs
successfully from the U.S., I felt we had to have this headquarters in Riyadh quickly. The
reason was fundamental-we were to spend the Saudis' money, and we should have our head
of operations as close as possible to the people putting up the money. It was just a question
of time until they were going to want to know what happened to their money, and they'd
object to going back to Italy to ask these questions. Besides, the work was in Saudi Arabia,
and I wanted to have the headquarters in place before the workload developed into a really
heavy management and control burden.
Williams was not too happy about a one-year curtailment of his plan, but it prevailed.
Brigadier General [Richard] Wells became the first commander of the Middle East Division
headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Colonel [George] Gray was in Saudi Arabia as district engineer. He was a man you could put
at the end of the line and not worry about getting the job done. He wasn't all that thrilled to
have somebody move in on top of him.
My deputy tour was only one year. I had several articles prepared for Water
One
was called, "Our Troubled Waterways," as I recall [see Appendix A]. Then there was an
interview about my civil works, what I saw for the future. There were some pretty interesting
things in there, particularly on the wetlands, which in those days wasn't a headline item but
which I had thought would become a major problem. We were still tidying up the 404
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