Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
He wouldn't have radio contact because we had no radio for him. So, we would have to go
back later and find him. I'd have to tell my jeep driver that too. I'd have to ride an M59
because we were going across country. The jeep couldn't keep up. So, I would have to go
find my jeep at the end of the period. Then we'd have to go find the tractor-trailer and dozer
and bring them in to where we were. At the same time, we're busy preparing to go on to a
defensive mission or set up for the obstacle work we needed to do.
The M59 had an engine on the right and left sides. We had one very sick, lemon M59. It
always managed to break down on every exercise. So, we had to shuffle to make things work,
but, having been taught mission accomplished is paramount, you have to make do and find
the way to still accomplish the mission even though there are all these kinds of obstacles.
Q:
So, you learned things for the future about engineer equipment?
A:
Organization and combined arms. The emphasis in the armored division was always
combined arms. It was obvious then that engineers were an integral necessity in the
combined arms team, and we really were maneuver. We worked with maneuver all the time.
It was standard procedure when the 32d Tank Battalion marched that there would be seven
tanks and then my engineer platoon, then the rest of the battalion. Many a road march I made
on the tank trails of Grafenwhr in the black of night, watching the cat eyes of the tank in
front of me with my M59s behind my jeep, hoping we'd stop in time before we would run
up under the tank ahead. Squinting through the dust, in the dark, we would roam those trails
at night and we'd turn off and we'd assemble. I mean, we really practiced moving tanks. The
standard procedure always was that my platoon would follow the lead platoon plus the extra
two command vehicles of the company in the column.
Q:
At this time the engineer equipment hadn't kept up? Wasn't quite adequate for the movement
required? For the speed?
A:
Well, what wasn't adequate were things that have always gone wrong. Even then we needed
the M9 ACE because, although the bulldozer could do the job on the objective when we
wanted to push dirt, it couldn't go cross-country. So, it could run in a road convoy but it
couldn't go across country. Therefore, we had to find a place to put it. We didn't have
enough radios so that everybody could have one, which was why we later insisted the M9
ACE have a radio when some people wanted to cut it out.
I mean, the experience that I had there as an engineer platoon leader armed me with the
ability to articulate later why we still had to have the radio, because in the M9 tests at Fort
Hood, the location of the radio was a problem because of overheating. One easy solution
would have been to take the radio out; then we wouldn't have a problem. I insisted we keep
the radio and relocate it because of my experiences of years before and since you want to talk
to that M9 guy and be able to move him and have him in the communications net.
The fact that our platoon leader was mounted in a quarter-ton jeep rather than a tracked
vehicle was a problem that I've already mentioned. The fact that we only had two instead of
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