Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
Now, this is not the tactical nuclear weapon, of course, but we had the atomic demolition
munition [ADM] in the 3d Armored Division at that time, and so I did get involved with that
and trained in ADM while I was in Germany in that first assignment.
Q:
That's a weapon whose fortunes have waxed and waned.
A:
Well, I mean, it really wasn't a weapon. It was a demolition munition. To put it in the context
of what it could do to destroy something, it had a real purpose. I was very involved in that
later in the 7th Engineer Brigade because of the different way it had moved over time, which
I can comment on right now--probably the best time to do it.
The standards for the ADM or other nuclear weapons are always very high, and the rules and
regulations almost go to the ridiculous when you're training with it, some of them for good
reason--safety. Some of them for another good reason--release authority and the need to use
it in the right places. Some for good reason like you want to make sure it goes off at the right
time and the right place to give you the right obstacle. Other procedures, like make sure
you've wiped it 13 seconds after something else happened with the right kind of tissue and
all of these kinds of things, were almost laboratory in approach.
So, back when I was trained in this, we were actually handling and inserting the ball. And, as
a consequence, we did certain things with a lot of safety in mind. To go through the step-by-
step procedure, with tissues and all, I mean, we would fail the training test if anything was
amiss--awfully rigorous for the field, for training for combat.
I thought that ridiculous nature was brought to extremes when I was an umpire on an Army
training test with another engineer battalion. We were in the field environment at
Wildflecken, and they were responsible for putting an ADM in to blow a pass to create an
obstacle. As I got out there to evaluate them, the lieutenant came up and wanted to make sure
that I approved his substitution list, that they didn't have real Kleenex to wipe the ball with
and they were just going to simulate that with something else. I was thinking, "How does that
affect mission accomplishment?" I said, "Look, once you get that thing slapped home, if you
back off the right distance and you set the right number of things in your timer and it goes
click, you pass. If it doesn't go click, you don't pass. I don't care what kind of tissue you
have." I mean, that's for the IG [Inspector General] teams. So, higher-ups could descend
upon you for that, but here we're talking tactical.
Now, what's that a reflection of? I reflect back to my Ranger School experience, still worried
about too much simulation, train realistic, have the right standard, and it's pass or fail
depending on whether your operation accomplished the mission. There was that kind of IG
environment prevalent then. So, because of that, everything done with ADMs was very
rigorously looked upon by the whole battalion staff.
Consequently, we had one company in the battalion that was working the ADM mission, and
invariably you had to give the best platoon leader to that company. When it came time for
inspection everybody sent a truck over there so they had the best trucks. They didn't leak
because you couldn't have anybody leaking any axle grease. So, because of the rigorous
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