________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
We completed the QL1 paving and dedicated it one
week late. Not bad, considering we had the Cung
Son clearance mission put on top of us, and that was
the job most impacted by that. We basically made
the move on schedule.
So, we echeloned out. I started with a tactical
command post down in the new area but stayed back
mostly in the old area. Then more and more of our
operations were down in the new area, and I would
fly back and forth between the two, which were
about 200 kilometers apart.
Another complicating thing was that we had been in
place for a number of months. We really had a lot of
supplies stacked up, and we wanted very much to
take them down to Don Duong so we could use
them. We had a large number of large steel stringers
for bridges, and we had a lot of bridges to build. We
already had been down there doing recons for the
work. As soon as we took responsibility down there,
Lieutenant Colonel Kem spoke at the
we were on the road doing work, using the 589th's
dedication of the Ban Thach bridge.
D Company, now under our operational control
pending the flag change and reassignment.
So, we started bringing LSTs [landing ship, tank] into the beaches at Tuy Hoa. We would
take our materiel down there, like the steel stringers, and we'd use dozers to winch them
aboard the LSTs. Then run down the coast to Phan Rang, offload them, and haul them up the
hill to our new base camp.
After a while the 18th Engineer Brigade got wind of all of that and put a stop to our materiel
movement, and said we should leave all that there for the 84th. So, when we began to turn
over to the 84th, we left a large Class II and IV stock of all kinds of things. We left a huge
yard full of asphalt in drums we'd been using to pave QL1.
This became a cause clbre 16 months later when General [John W.] Morris went into Tuy
Hoa and saw all the stocks lying around in the depot. He was the 18th Engineer Brigade
commander by this time. There had been a mission change. They decided not to bring the
84th down to Tuy Hoa and the 84th didn't come in as they originally planned, but we had
arranged materiel transfer, S4 to S4, when we left.
Now, they hadn't physically completed the move, but we were gone and were unaware of
that. So, there were no engineers in Tuy Hoa when General Morris went up there and found
all those asphalt drums sitting out there in this huge yard and all of the other equipment. He
decided that the 577th and I had abandoned all this stuff and left it there, which wasn't true.
We'd turned it over to the 84th.
117
Previous Page
