________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
of their recognition that you had to take it when you could. You couldn't expect it at the end
of the supply chain.
Q:
Anything else about the advanced course that we should talk about here?
A:
I was promoted to major there, and we finished up a very nice, but very quick, six months. In
October '65 I then went off to the 82d Airborne Division.
307th Engineer Battalion, 82d Airborne Division
Q:
How did that assignment come about?
A:
Well, my old friend, Jim Ellis, as you recognize by now, had gone back and forth with me
here and there. I was before him in Vietnam, then he came in. When I went to the district, he
went to company command, then went to the advanced course and then to the 307th
Engineers where he was the S3. He was now selected for Leavenworth because he had done
those things and was moving off in the summer of '65 to go to Fort Leavenworth for
Command and General Staff College. He gave my name to the battalion commander, who
had asked for me as a by-name select to the Office of Personnel Operations. They saw fit to
give me that assignment.
So, I went down to be the S-3 of the 307th. That was my supposed assignment. Max Noah
was to be the exec. The 82d had deployed to the Dominican Republic, and Jim Ellis had been
down there with them, had deployed with them. When I arrived in October they were still
there, so I processed in at Fort Bragg and then flew on down to join the 307th in Santo
Domingo. I was assigned initially as the assistant division engineer.
That's where I've been so very helpful to--I say in jest, and keep reminding him all the
time--to Barry Frankel in the real estate business because my duties at that time were with
the Real Estate Office of Jacksonville District. That was headed by Dave Gray, who later was
our Chief of Real Estate here in USACE headquarters. I didn't know him at that time, but
when I went back as the Ohio River Division Engineer, he was Chief of Real Estate before he
moved up here to the headquarters.
As assistant division engineer, one of my duties was to be the point of contact to
Jacksonville's Real Estate Office. As real estate requirements came up, we would turn to that
office for accomplishment.
When I arrived, there was still a no man's land with barbed wire, sandbags, weapons pointed
in anger on both sides, and sniping rounds across the divide in the center of Santo Domingo.
Our 82d Airborne Division headquarters was located at the Dominican Military Academy.
The engineer battalion headquarters was in the Trujillo estate, a small villa outside of Santo
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