________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
there were a lot of things on our leaders' minds that drove them to think about other things
too. They probably had difficulty getting the message across. I don't think the mission
emphasis was ever gone, but they may have had such other problems--discipline, riots, racial
tension, not the least a lack of training funds--that there were other things on the platter.
One of the things, while I was there in the later '70s, that helped us get out of that situation
was, first of all, the new rules on drugs were in effect where you didn't have to tolerate
with the community that General [George S.] Blanchard, CINCUSAREUR [Commander in
Chief, U.S. Army, Europe] really got into when he was in Europe, that "We are citizens of
the German community, interactive German neighbors." So, the whole thing of the Army
really coming to grips with our multiracial dimension and working so that blacks and whites
understood and appreciated each other and the defusing of the tensions that had been going
on went on further while I was there.
That then allowed a new commander like Lieutenant General Dave Ott, who came in as VII
Corps commander, to focus on, "Let's get back to training." This accelerated as our whole
general defense plan changed then because we moved to the "forward defense concept." We
were moving forward and changing all general defense plans, which prompted a change in
the thinking of everybody. So, leadership turned to rethinking and pushed other leadership
levels into action. Now we all had to go out and reestablish and walk the new terrain--new
positions, new avenues, new obstacles, and we had to redo new target folders.
Continuing my leap-ahead at that point when I was in the VII Corps, 7th Brigade, I changed
whole support relationships just to charge new thinking by commanders and staffs. Our 9th
Engineer Battalion had always supported the 3d Infantry Division (Mech). I really thought
they were stale. We were doing things the same old ways we had done them for years. We
had something new in the Corps--the 12th Panzer Division, a German unit, would be the
Corps to fight in our sector. I hooked up the 9th Engineer Battalion to support the 12th
Panzers and let the 237th Engineer Battalion take over the support role of the 3d Infantry
Division--not popular with my 9th Engineer Battalion commander, who liked his
relationship with the 3d.
One of the major reasons I did that was because I thought things were stale. I wanted new
thinking. So, when the new battalion commander, Ted Vander Els, arrived, he had a new
challenge to support a Panzer division, which he never had before. That really stirred the
juices of the 9th.
The 237th now had a division to support, the 3d. We broke all the old relationships and had
to establish new ones. This stirred all the creative juices of both the commander of the 10th
Engineer Battalion in the 3d Mech Division and the commander of the 237th because they
had to work out new things. I thought it was all for the good. I took the 78th Engineer
Battalion and had them start working with the 1st Armored Division, whereas before, just the
82d Engineer Battalion supported them and the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment. Again, I had
stirred the creativity of the leadership thinking in the 78th. So, I really was able to use that for
good motivational and training cause. As we moved to forward defense, everything was
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