Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
Staff, U.S. Military Academy
Q:
The summer of 1969, then, you headed back to the United States, and then eventually back to
West Point. How soon did you know you were headed back to the academy?
A:
I don't know, probably April or May. I came home in July. It was a couple of months before I
came back.
Q:
Was this an assignment you were looking forward to? Was it sort of the thing you would like
to do next?
A:
I hadn't really thought about it. I'd been told I was going to Washington to the Office of the
Chief of Engineers to be the executive to the Director of Military Programs. At that time the
Corps headquarters was still at the old location near National Airport, and one of my first
responsibilities, I was told, would be to move into the Forrestal Building, into the new digs.
I'm not sure when I was told that. I was sort of planning on an assignment in the Office of the
Chief of Engineers when all of a sudden I was called and they said, "We would like to send
you to West Point to be a tactical officer, a regimental executive officer, and would you like
to do that?" I said, "Yep," so I did.
I didn't go up to teach. I'd always been trying to get back up to the department of engineering
to teach. So, when you say, would I like to have done that next, I really never thought about
it. The tactical officer assignment came up, and the opportunities sounded good because I'd
be dealing with cadets. Here I'd just come out of a leadership role, battalion commander, and
they wanted those kinds of people up at West Point. Just like, as I mentioned, when I was a
cadet, the Al Haigs were across the quadrangle, the Colonel Mike Davisons were regimental
commanders, and the Haldanes and Pattons were about--recent combat leadership
experience.
So, in 1969 they were looking for recent Vietnam experience and battalion commanders to
come back and be the number two person in each of the regiments in the tactical department.
It was a lieutenant colonel position, a combined regimental executive officer/S3. So, that's
what I did.
Q:
Tell me a little bit more about what that job entails, what the responsibility is like?
A:
Well, the tactical department has a normal military organization. The commandant is the
senior guy, and he has a staff, S1, S3, S4, the cadet activities officer, four staff officers,
and he has four regiments in the brigade he commands. Each regiment, at that time, was
commanded by a colonel, and he would have two on his staff. One would be the lieutenant
colonel, my position, who would be his exec/S3. The other one would be a major, the S
1/S4, then George Lawton.
There were nine company tactical officers who were typically captains, maybe a major here
or there. That was the assigned chain of command. Then there was a cadet chain of command
made up of cadet captains, the regimental commanders, regimental executive officers, and
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