________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
We had folks in those days that the judge said, "Either you go to jail or you join the Army."
So, how do you get them motivated? And, you know, I was the guy who came out of Ranger
and Airborne Schools, and we did the chants and we did our runs, and that was new and
different for an armored division. Nowadays, this happens all over the Army. It was a real
developing experience.
62d Engineer Battalion (Construction)
Q:
You left the 23d Engineer Battalion about November of 1959, I think, right? Then you went
to the 62d Engineer Battalion (Construction) at Fort Leonard Wood. What position did you
go into in the 62d?
A:
I went back to being a platoon leader again. That was one of the real problems of the period,
a real morale breaker. You have to be cognizant of such things when you're doing
reorganization things to force structure like we are today. I went from all the excitement of
being on the frontier of freedom and all the missions in Europe, back to a unit in the
continental United States that was well down the priority curve--short of officers, among
other things. The officer they had deleted was the company exec out of every company. You
were either the company commander or you were a platoon leader.
Now, you need to know, I guess it's pertinent, how I arrived there because, in fact, I didn't
want to leave Germany, and I had written the Seventh Army Engineer and asked to extend
my tour and stay. It turns out the commanding general of Fort Leonard Wood of that day,
who was also the commander of the 18th Engineer Brigade, which was located there, had just
complained to his personnel boss. This happened to be the Chief of Engineers at that time
because an engineer personnel officer was in the Office of the Chief. He complained that he
was always getting shortchanged and never got any Regular Army officers. So, they decided
to fix that and thus sent 12 Regular Army lieutenants to Fort Leonard Wood beginning in the
summer of '59.
I was the 12th to arrive. I needed to be a company commander and I wanted to be a company
commander. I was told, "You can be a company commander in March, but all those positions
are filled for now." They really were, by all of those other 12 who had arrived. We were all
peers from peer groups '55, '56, '57, coming back from many places, most of them from
Germany. So, I begrudgingly became a platoon leader again.
The other interesting point about all of that is, having got his 12 Regular Army lieutenants
the summer of '59, they were all gone by the summer of '60. So, the longest one there lasted
a year. I was the last to arrive, in November. I was gone by May 1960. Almost all 12 were
selected for civil schooling, and we moved off to go to our civil schools that summer. So, I
arrived at Leonard Wood, and they told me that they'd give me a company command in
March. One week later my orders came out for civil schooling in June, and they said, "Forget
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