Engineer Memoirs
When I retired, the MX program had not materialized. There was a great deal of attention
given to it, both in the Congress and in the Executive Branch of the U.S. government, which
included the Corps, of course. Ultimately, it was canned and now it will probably never be
built. Still, the Corps was well placed, if it had happened.
You know, the military program was fragmented over a large number of military installations
throughout the world. Consequently, individual projects often were not sufficiently substantial
to warrant particular discussion here. Exceptions would include the Israeli airfield work and
portions of the Saudi program--also, programs such as housing, military training facilities,
special warehouses, and shop facilities. The projects within the programs were usually
distributed over two, three, a dozen, or three or four dozen installations.
Some programs stand out in my recollection, for example, the hospital programs. Every
hospital was tough, so a special management group involving medical and Corps people was
established. Hospital construction was a major management challenge within the Corps.
Q ..
Most of these were renovations rather than new constructions?
A
There were some of both-a new one in Colorado, a rebuild in Hawaii. Fort Campbell got a
new hospital. There were several new hospitals. I don't remember all of them now, but then,
as you say, there were a lot of rehabilitations. Walter Reed was the predecessor of most of the
ones I'm thinking about, and we learned enough at Walter Reed to help us with the rest of
The postal program was winding down. The point I'd like to leave on the military is-it's not
that there wasn't a large program, it's not that there wasn't a lot to do, it's not that it didn't
take a lot of
it's just that with specific exceptions, the program at any one
location did not provide multimillion-dollar structures.
Q ..
Wasn't there a particular problem with facilities in Europe?
A
There are two parts to this subject. One is the facilities engineer business itself. General
as I think I've already mentioned, became the director of Facilities Engineering in the
Chief of Engineers' office in a move by General Gribble to elevate the importance of
providing and maintaining our soldiers' facilities.
In conjunction with that, we started the one-stop shopping concept mentioned earlier, where
any district could support any commander who called up and asked for help. That added a lot
of momentum. We did reduce the
of maintenance repair here in the United States.
A singular issue was the European housing facilities for our soldiers. General Cooper was
deputy commanding general, U.S. Army, Europe. He became particularly concerned about the
housing situation for soldiers and proceeded to focus attention from both the command and
engineering approaches. This issue arose while I was deputy chief as indicated previously, so
a program was devised to upgrade the facilities for our soldiers, not only the living facilities,
but the functional facilities-in Germany especially.
Once the Congress became aware and started the funding, there were significant
improvements. It was a big program which our Europe Division managed. There, again, it was
fragmented. There's no single place that stands out like an Israeli airfield or the Saudi
program, but as a program it was especially important and valuable.
One other item in the military area is engineer equipment. As a second lieutenant in World
War II, I used a D-handle shovel and a D-7 tractor. I noticed the second lieutenants in 1976
still had a D-handle shovel and D-7 tractor while modem sophisticated equipment served the
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