Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
end of the week we ought to be able to get so far, get this done." Well, when the week went
by and about half of it was done, it wasn't something like, "Come on, tell me why you didn't
do it." I might suggest to Tri, "Lieutenant Can really didn't progress very well this week." I
would get that, "Well, you know, that's the way it is. He did his best," or something like that.
I'd suggest, "Well, maybe you could tell him go do this, go do that."
Meanwhile, once or twice a week I'd go back into the MAAG headquarters, and the
questions would be, "How much did you accomplish this week?" After a few weeks of this,
this was really getting tough for me to live with because it just wasn't ever enough. You can't
be on the Vietnamese' backs every minute, every day, doing things. You needed some space
for the Vietnamese to accomplish something without looking over their shoulder, although
they did things best when you were looking over their shoulder. Nevertheless, you needed
some back-away time, and I had none because I was always with them. About that time came
the big push on reducing the deadline rate.
We had a deadline rate, which must have been on the order of 45 percent of our equipment. I
mean, it was terrible. The battalion had just finished a project down near Dalat. It was the
Camly Airfield, and a lot of the equipment on the deadline list was down in the city of Nha
Trang and some still at Camly--at Nha Trang because that was the maintenance depot, and
they'd never been brought forward. I mean, I'm talking about 12 to 14 items of the battalion.
So, I started trying to figure out what I could do about reducing the equipment deadline. I
began to move, then, around the Corps'
tactical area to find the problem, and I
talked to my boss, Major Nagata, to try
to attack the problem.
The battalion headquarters company,
the battalion's rear of the 41st Engineer
Battalion, was in Ban Me Thuot, and
they had their other line company there
also. Then the equipment, a lot of it was
still strung out in the maintenance
chain. So, I started going to Ban Me
Thuot, first with Captain Tri and later
I'd just go alone, then on to Nha Trang,
trying to get stuff out. We probably
reduced the deadline rate by getting
stuff turned in and off the books down
to maybe 15, 16 percent by the time I
left.
The other thing I was doing, though,
was standing over the battalion
Captain Kem as an Engineer advisor
maintenance sergeant as he typed up
talking with a local inhabitant near
requisitions. That seemed to be the only
Pleiku in South Vietnam in April 1962.
way--and then we'd almost have to
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