________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Q:
Well, there were a number of well-known--to me, at least--engineer general officers in your
class.
A:
Eight.
Q:
I was looking down the list. A name that's prominent in the news today, General [Norman]
Schwarzkopf, was in your class.
A:
When I said eight, I meant eight engineer general officers. We always felt we were a good
class. We were brought up well. We started at West Point during the Korean War. We went
in on the 1st of July 1952, so Korea ended while we were there. We had tactical officers who
had reached some relatively high rank during World War II, like General Mike Davison who
had been class of '39--not too far out, let's see, 13, 14 years out of the academy. He was a
colonel and had been a brigade commander in the war. Later he went on to get his fourth star
and command USAREUR [U.S. Army, Europe]. He was our regimental commander.
Most of the company-level tactical officers and many of the other staff had returned from
Korea where they'd spent a year or more. For example, my company, which was Company I
1--we had two regiments in those days, companies A through M, in each of the two
regiments--lived in the South Area, which was horseshoe-shaped. Across the quadrangle the
Company M1 tactical officer was Captain Al Haig. Captain George Patton had another
company, and Captain Bob Haldane came in to be our tactical officer. All of these folks, who
later rose to stars and fame, had been in Korea already, so they were back to take care of us.
That wasn't your question. Your question had to do with, I guess, Norm Schwarzkopf, and I
was talking about the class in general. We, as I mentioned, had a very cohesive class, and we
maintained that. I don't know what the number is--something like 25, 27 made general
officer. Ten of the class were killed in Vietnam; we all served there in our captain, major,
and lieutenant colonel years. I served there as a captain and lieutenant colonel. Norm
Schwarzkopf now commands our Central Command in our Middle East forces. Classmate
John Foss commands TRADOC [Training and Doctrine Command]; we were fellow
commandants together when he was at the Infantry School and I was at the Engineer School.
At that time, as it had been true for Jim Ellis, too--I followed Jim Ellis as commandant of
the Engineer School--you could go to meetings at TRADOC or CAC [Combined Arms
Center] and find many classmates there. There'd be John Foss from the Infantry School;
Dave Palmer, now the superintendent of West Point, was at that time the commandant of the
Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth; Tom Weinstein had the
Intelligence School; Rick Brown had the Armor School. So, we had Engineer, Infantry,
Armor, Fort Leavenworth, Military Intelligence, so there are five commandants.
So, we've always had that interaction of classmates. You see people here and there. Even
back in Germany, in the 3d Armored Division on a Winter Shield exercise, I was driving
down the road near Schweinfurt and there was a Jeep off in the ditch. I pulled over to see if I
could help, and it was my good friend Jim Ellis, infantry platoon leader. I helped pull him
out, and he went on his way. So, those things happen again and again throughout a career.
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