________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
An engaging thing about it was that it was in the mind. It was preached in the 3d Armored
Division that we were all armored; there were armored engineers, armored infantrymen,
armored tankers--tankers weren't the only ones in the armored force. So, it was a state of
mind of how you did things, and that was mobility, quickly developing your shock action,
and using your firepower. We were taught how to do things by frag order, and how to move
and go. The alert systems of those days turned us out into our local assembly area, ready to
move forward. Sometimes we did move forward to general defense plan positions and then
had terrain exercises so we would know the terrain on which we would fight.
I remember later we started having the big movement exercises, probably when [Creighton
W.] Abrams was there. He put the entire division on the move after one of the alerts.
Division would come out with an order that basically would take division units from
wherever they were and put them in a long road march. Of course everybody was joining and
leaving at different places, so you could get quite an exercise on road movement, hitting the
starting point on time. It was drummed into all of us lieutenants that, boy, you made the
starting point--not a minute late, not five seconds early, you did it right on time. Then we
made our march intervals on the autobahns, before all of today's German traffic was there.
So, the mind-set of mobility and marshaling your force and delivering your firepower was
endemic to the whole division. Those were good lessons for me that carried forth into the
future when I commanded the 7th Engineer Brigade--how VII Corps operated and how
engineers provided support to divisions who operate that way. I had learned the need to stress
the engineer mind-set that has to support that kind of hard-hitting mobile action. Those
things led eventually into the thinking that went into the force structure analysis that became
EForce. I mean, the lessons from those days in the 23d Engineers were a genesis for what
came later.
As a platoon leader supporting my two battalions, my platoon and I would go to Grafenwhr
and would spend the month or six-week rotation at Grafenwhr with them, living out in the
barracks with them and supporting them on the exercises. Grafenwhr at that time hadn't
been turned into the major range complex that it is today, the live-fire range. It was more of a
maneuver place. Now you do less unit maneuver and more live-fire training. Typically during
a maneuver battalion training test, one part of it was attacking as an objective the Hoefenohe
Church area, and that was tactically moving many kilometers over rough terrain to get to
Hoefenohe Church. I'd come up with an engineer plan. I'd take my platoon out in our
armored personnel carriers, M59s. I had difficulty keeping up with two M59s and one
truck--only two of my squads had an M59.
Then there was the problem of the dozer. I mean, why do we have the M9 ACE [armored
combat earthmover] today? Because we had the problem of the roadbound dozer. What to do
about the platoon's dozer that couldn't keep up? We would have to give it to the assistant
platoon sergeant and say, "Here's where I'm going to be en route to Hoefenohe Church,
here's the objective, and we'll be following this route. You need to follow generally this
route, and at the end of the day we'll be there. You go to that intersection and we'll police
you up."
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