Engineer Memoirs
I'm glad to hear Bill Wray felt that way because he was a significant player in the whole
Saudi situation. He deserves a great deal of credit for many other things including closing our
offices when he moved to Europe as top man.
Q ..
That brings one follow-up question on this I wanted to ask. When the Mediterranean Division
moved to the Middle East, it left the work in Europe in the hands of the Europe Division,
EUD, which was a fairly new organization.
A ..
Yes.
Q ..
Did you have any reservations about that?
A ..
No. The Saudi Arabia matter was paramount. Med Division was busy in Sicily. About that
same time an agreement was made for the Navy to take over the perimeter of the
Mediterranean to a certain distance east, and Admiral
people moved in behind the
Corps in Sicily and lower Italy under this new agreement. The Army effort, which went from
Med to Frankfurt, wasn't as big as you might otherwise have thought.
While the Europe Division, as such, was relatively new, we need to remember that an
engineer command under Generals Koisch and
existed before EUD. I don't recall
having any hesitancy about that. Anyway, that's what we did and it worked. That's the key
thing.
We've spent a lot of time on Saudi Arabia.
Q ..
You talked about the discussions of the American military command arrangements in Saudi
Arabia. I wondered if that had come up, the whole idea of putting the Corps' effort under the
American armed forces commander over there. It would be sort of logical that that idea would
come up, I guess.
A ..
Well, it does. First, he was the senior man. Actually the access to the United States
government through the military mission was cleaner than in our assistance agreement. It was
an idea that seemed to have some promise, but the timing would have been serious. Anyhow,
Secretary Clements decided not to do it and I was happy. Also, about this time was another
somewhat unfortunate decision here at home. Our Congress included the engineer assistance
agreement work as part of the foreign military sales effort. That meant that Congress got in
the act on all the work that was done under the engineer assistance agreement.
Q ..
Turning to the other big international program when you were Chief, the Israeli air base
program.
Well, as I said, that's the toughest specific challenge we had. Many complex factors made it
A
tough. When this whole project started, I suggested or decided that we'd send a public affairs
person to Israel to be on the ground during this whole process. As a result of that, a book has
Air Bases in the
been written. I don't remember the title
but a Corps'
historian [Frank N. Schubert] wrote it so you can find it. The book's okay; however, it was
based on a perspective below the Chief of Engineers' level; therefore, some assumptions or
conclusions were off target when drawn about my thinking and decisions, but I don't think
I should belabor that point. The book is a worthwhile read.
The key problems with the Israeli project were:
First, there was a fixed deadline to make the airfields operational or the Israeli air
force would be grounded.
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