Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
I did, and that place had a lot of problems. Dick Tallman's charge to me was to put it back on
an operational footing. For example, I found out the budget was prepared by the same guy
who approved all the purchases against that budget. I walked down to the supply room and
found out that he ordered the same number of the various sizes of khaki uniforms. So, we're
out of 32 medium, but we had a whole shelf full of 38 extra longs.
There was a lot of dissension in the ranks. The janitors wanted to be an operational entity. A
lot of things just weren't being taken care of. So, it was my job to clean house and get it
straightened out.
I did that by adding a second deputy position. I had two; I had a major that worked for me as
assistant and added a second one. Major Bob Oliver, an engineer, had been there as
assistant S4 over the last year and was doing a good job. There was way more to do than he
could take care of, so I brought in Major Gary Brown, a field artilleryman, to fill the other
position.
During that year we straightened out a lot of those things, and we rewrote the logistics
manual for the Corps of Cadets, which addressed how to do everything from rooms to
uniforms. We did quite a number of things to put supply, logistics, and transportation
activities into a better condition.
We also worked to review the cadet accounts. Our interaction with the academy treasurer was
on the cadet accounts--what moneys went into which part of the account. We reworked all
of those and worked very hard with now Major General Tom Arwood, who was then a major
and head of the West Point mess in Washington Hall. We fought a lot of problems together
that year.
For example, a couple of our United States senators decided that cadets should wait on their
own tables because, after all, when they went to college they had waited on tables in their
fraternities. So, in typical fashion, as I was to find out later when I came down to the Army
Staff, we got a message tasker from the Department of the Army, Office of the Chief
Legislative Liaison on Friday evening about five o'clock. The requirement was to provide
them a paper by eight o'clock Monday morning on the issue.
As the staffer responsible, I got that weekend mission and worked with Tom Arwood to
prepare our response--why things were different between a fraternity's and West Point's
meal operation. Why taking away from cadets' already full schedules, when we were paying
to get certain things accomplished, just wasn't smart. We submitted our paper back to the
Office of the Chief Legislative Liaison on Monday. Evidently, it worked.
Q:
How would you characterize the mood at West Point in the '69'71 time period, as opposed
to what you remembered when you'd been there before in the mid-50s. The Vietnam War is
still going on. Was it a lot different? Did it seem a lot different to you?
A:
Well, it's pretty hard to characterize because your view as a cadet is much different than your
view as a Tac officer at any time. I mean, often, when I was a cadet, what I wanted to do least
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