Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
and now with the arrival of the new group I was part of the transition, and I could really
watch that and enjoy it.
We had our engineer battalion Army training test that fall in October. It was very exciting as
we prepared for that, going up with a whole bunch of new people to take the pre-test at
Wildflecken, and having gone through many of those in years past with the same old group,
good as they were. This was exciting because we did things differently with a new flare and
with a more aggressive operational mode. They were good tests, and so very enjoyable.
Carter's idea was that the engineer battalion companies and platoons had to be able to move
like armor because we were an armored division. We had to be able to move off the road into
a quick holding area and then move back on the road and move. So, we were practicing those
kinds of operations.
We took our Army training test as an engineer battalion. Even though we would normally
support infantry and armor--that's how we were going to fight--in those days for some
reason we would take a training test as an integrated battalion. We would have missions in
which a company would go out to support somebody but that somebody wasn't there. So,
that part of it was a little bit off-line, but then we practiced other things we couldn't do
otherwise. So, we had a lot of big moves and heavy moves.
Now, as I mentioned, I was in the S3 section. We put on platoon tests that spring for every
platoon in the battalion, and we got to design the tests out of the S3 section. I could design
it based upon what I had learned being out on command post exercises with the kind of
experiences I had when I had to be "in charge," the kind of things that came out of my going
out with the 32d Tank and 37th Mech Infantry in combined-arms training, and the things I
learned in Ranger School--that you shouldn't simulate anything if you can make it realistic.
So, we put together some rather realistic tests in which I operated as the maneuver task force
S3. We set up a maneuver task force tactical operations center in the field that I operated
from to include a night shift. We would bring the platoon leaders into the operations center to
see me, the infantry task force S3, and we would give them "eyeball-to-eyeball" the
missions in a playacting mode much as I had received missions as a platoon leader in years
past. We had an S4 and the materials and the supplies needed, trying to replicate real-life
things as they did their various missions. We tried to never put them in the same place a
second time, and they never had to stop after having tactically put in a bridge and
administratively take out that bridge. They never went admin during the five days. We kept
them always in a training mode, all of which were outgrowths of my Ranger School
experience.
The kinds of things that the 3d Division was doing at that time, I thought, really prompted
our thinking and made for rather good training. For example, in our last day of the Army
training test at Wildflecken, after we'd been doing all of these kinds of various operating
support activities and engineer missions, we were given a mission in the middle of one
defensive scenario to move, say 55 kilometers back to the Main River in the vicinity of
Hanau. This was a tactical march, moving the whole battalion. When we got there, we were
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