John W. Morris
"one stop shopping" for engineering service, which was mentioned earlier in the deputy
discussion.
I was always promoting the importance of the civil works program to the Army by keeping
us ready to respond during peace-keeping work and especially mobilization for war with
competent engineering capability, et cetera.
After getting the Army leadership's support, I began to wonder what happens if they call our
hand, call our bluff on mobilization. Could we react promptly? The answer was we could not.
We didn't have the mechanisms to convert our civil capability and the construction industry
to full mobilization. Only a few generals serving in 1978 had been involved in the total
mobilization by this country in World War II-gas coupons, food stamps, rationing, et cetera.
A lot of people have planned for total mobilization who have not experienced it. Total
commitment of a country to support a war is a rare and mammoth move.
The Corps staff was instructed to go about the business, internally, of figuring out what we
had to do to support mobilization. Then General Rogers set up an Army policy that spoke of
mobilization. General Meyer followed with a rather dynamic objective for the Army to be
prepared to mobilize to meet international requirements.
There were several meetings at the National War College, Fort
on the subject. It
turned out that the engineers were well ahead because we had asked ourselves the question
some months earlier.
In conjunction with that, we needed to do something with the construction industry in the
country. So I looked to the Society of Military Engineers [SAME]. Today, thanks to Walter
[brigadier general, retired], executive director, SAME has a nice program to
communicate with and activate the industries.
Then came the environmental and the energy programs. We, the Corps, initiated a survey of
energy efficiency on military posts. Colonel Don
and the Strategic Studies Group
came up with a program to evaluate energy consumption and energy conservation.
The environmental program on military installations was more difficult. CERL had
developed a computerized EIS environmental assessment program. As mentioned earlier, the
military commanders in the mid-1970s didn't look on the environment as something that
impacted them, within the post perimeters. We tried to change that philosophy, but I don't
know that we did a very good job of it at that time. The Army now has the message on using
the property properly and on handling pollution problems.
Besides engineering support, energy, and the environment, the Corps' activity on the military
posts included the basic construction program in housing and facilities. We were starting the
day care facility program. Nobody really wanted to talk about day care early on but, of
course, that has developed into quite a program. We were competing very heavily to get the
post exchange work, and the commissary work. We got some, but not all of it because they
did not use appropriated funds totally.
The really big item for military program management was the Saudi program, and then later,
the Israeli airfields.
Q ..
What did the military construction program look like during your term as Chief?
A
It was pretty big. The Saudi program dominated it. We had-1 would say billion a year
in the military program, and I would guess 40 percent of that was Saudi, maybe a little more.
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