Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
Q:
I have one other thought that I don't think applies so much in the '50s. Again, going back to
people I've interviewed who graduated in the '30s, they seemed to find Engineer Branch
attractive because of the civil works activities, that if there were a long peacetime period, as
there was in the '30s, the engineer officers still had interesting work to do. Was that a
consideration at all in the '50s or had things changed quite a bit by then?
A:
We didn't know much about the civil works. I didn't know much about it. I understood there
was a bigger variety of things and opportunities in the Corps of Engineers. In our summer
training at Camp Buckner we had three weeks of infantry training, a week of armor training,
four days of artillery training, and three days of engineer training. Our class went down to
Benning during one of our summers and spent a month at Fort Benning in a part of the basic
infantry course.
Even though there were most enjoyable parts of that training, there was some thought that
there must be something more than going down to the bottom of the hill and practice training
going to the top of the hill, practice the attack and then digging in and defending. So, even
with the troops having all the emphasis, as it should be, there was always the feeling there
was a greater variety in the Corps of Engineers. Building dams, operating the locks along the
Ohio River like I did later, those weren't obvious and weren't apparent to me in that branch
decision-making process.
Later on, the Army brought in cadets for summer training to expose them to some of those
missions to try to make the point that there is that kind of variety of experience later on in a
career. Some of those cadets would go on to be armor officers and artillerymen, some would
come to the Corps. I think there's a very big influence on a cadet in what he's exposed to and
who he's exposed to, and those exposures can be positive or negative. For example, during
my command of the 7th Engineer Brigade in Germany, we would get 20 to 22 cadets a
summer. We would try to match those with battalions when they were going through a cycle
of doing something. You wouldn't want to put the cadet in the company that was standing
down for a month's maintenance, for example. You would like to put him or her in the
battalion that's going into Grafenwhr for its training, construction cycle. The experience
they would have would be one of leading engineer troops in doing things of an operational
training mission mode, rather than a housekeeping mode.
If a cadet did that in an engineer outfit, he'd be positively motivated. If he did that in an
armor outfit, he'd be positively motivated. If he was in a housekeeping engineer mode or in a
maintenance mode in an armor outfit, he could be very much turned off. Yet, that's part of
the annual cycle, too, so those were realities.
The people were important. Where the people treat them like grown human beings, allow
them to do something, where the kind of command atmosphere that's prevalent in that place
is positive, the experience is positive. If the other company officers are all married and run
off to their wives at night and don't try to assimilate the cadet, he or she may have a bad
experience. If there are a couple of bachelors in the company or a married couple that brings
the cadet under their wing and take him or her around and do whatever they're doing--in
Germany, for instance, where we were--then it's going to be a very positive experience.
18
Previous Page
