________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Q:
Well, that leads in to an interesting topic, since I guess around 1962 was when the Chief of
Engineers lost a lot of his input into the officer personnel selection procedures for Corps
officers. It created a situation in which the Chief has a role in these personnel assignments,
but they do come from another part of the Army. Could you talk some more about how that
system worked and how the Office of the Chief of Engineers interacted with the Officer
Personnel Directorate to make the critical assignments for the Corps, which are the district
engineers?
A:
During my time there, Lieutenant General Fred Clarke was Chief of Engineers, followed by
Lieutenant General Gribble. The deputy was initially Major General Rollins, followed by
Major General Dan Raymond. In all those instances, I had access to them because we're
talking colonels and because they were interested. The Chief of Engineers has the
responsibility for providing engineer support for the Army, and he was very interested in his
executive-level assignments. With the exception of the selection of district engineers and
commanders, I would guess it was basically up to me as to when I wanted to call to inquire,
or when I wanted to make them aware of something.
If something came up with them, they could call me. Sometimes they went through their
Chief of Military Personnel, Colonel Jim Bunch.
Back then, a military colonel was the Military Personnel Chief, separate from the Chief of
Civilian Personnel, rather than later when it became a military lieutenant colonel position,
and then later still a civilian position, now Ed Gibson.
We had quite a routine interaction with Colonel Bunch. We had up until this point a very
rigorous screening process for district engineers, which I'll go into in a minute. For anybody
within the Corps of Engineers family, then, I would deal with Jim Bunch as a natural
business. If you take out district engineers and you take out everybody that was part of what
is now USACE, that still left quite a number of folks. They might or might not be interested
in the routine reassignment of the post engineer at Fort Campbell or the ROTC instructor or
anyone else.
They were generally interested in where everybody was going, but it wasn't something I
would call up to dialogue with them. Typically, the conversations weren't much. I never, for
those others, floated a paper to the Office of the Chief of Engineers saying "please approve."
So, it was all in terms of dialogue--are we getting it right; is it happening the right way?
Oftentimes, of course, there are so many people in the USACE part of it, they had to be
released from USACE to go somewhere else. So, this caused a very natural dialogue with
Colonel Jim Bunch and his folks. For example, "I'm thinking of so and so, who is right now
the deputy division engineer at the Missouri River Division, to go out and be the post
engineer at Fort Campbell. He normally finishes a tour there in December; I really need him
in August. Could we get him early? I talked to the individual, and he wants the job."
Then Jim Bunch would be the one who would call the division engineer and say, "What do
you think?"--and coordinate that sort of thing.
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