________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
to conduct a river crossing across the Main River, building bridges in support of the division
(simulated) who was making this crossing.
We pulled our various companies back out of the missions they were doing. Once they'd
finish a mission, we'd put them on the road, and so it was all staggered. It was not a nice
clean move, like moving out of bivouac. I mean, they were all out doing operational
missions. We wrote that order, got the battalion on the move, and we were to meet our bridge
company and other bridge elements from V Corps at the crossing location.
It was complicated--both sending and meeting--as well as thinking and operating on the
move. Running down the road in our armored personnel carrier from Wildflecken, we got the
word by message that so much of our bridges had been destroyed that we must be prepared to
link an M4T6 bridge with a Class 60 bridge. We had never done that before--never had
practiced it. Now, here we were already on the road, halfway to the place we're going to do
it, we're meeting the folks who had the Class 60, and we now had the rather interesting task
of determining how to put them together.
Gerry Galloway, later a brigadier general and the dean at West Point, was B Company
commander at that time. With the M4T6 bridge at that time, the E Company provided the
bridge to a line company who did the building. Basically, Gerry was on the ground with B
Company, and we figured out a way of putting it together. Then we were there on the river
bank all morning, conjecturing about whether it was going to work and how we were going
to make it work. Essentially the proceeding was what was in the field manuals, at least later. I
certainly had never read it before that day.
B Company took what M4T6 was not destroyed, built it from the near shore, balk after balk
after balk. Then the Class 60 was assembled at another site on the near shore and you moved
across to the far shore. The joining section was constructed at another site on the near shore,
with M4T6 balk at one end, Class 60 on the other end, and B Company lashed them together
with cables because they didn't join naturally. Then an AVLB was overlaid over that joint
and lashed in. Then that completed link raft was moved into place, married it up with the
Class 60, and then closed with the M4T6 to make the complete bridge.
So, this was certainly an interesting technical problem, but also an interesting management
problem since we received the mission while on the move and had to figure it out on the
move. I mean, people's thinking power was put to the test. Folks went to work to accomplish
parts of the mission. Other folks were trying to figure out how we'd make the marriage work.
I use that as an example of the kinds of challenges and opportunities that were thrown down
to ensure we were thinking, capable, and able to move and accomplish our mission in
armored style.
Q:
That's interesting. You mentioned earlier training, preparing for what you hoped would never
come. In Europe at this time and in the '57'60 time frame--you arrived in March of '57, not
too long after the Hungarian revolution and repression. What was that situation like? The
tensions that were experienced in terms of what might happen.
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