________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
that he was going to have this list given to him of folks who had been sorted out, and he
really wasn't going to have to give up much at all because he was going to have identified for
him the right people. After that, he still had the ability to put a person that was seen as
broadly capable with experience, say with troops and military construction and civil works,
all three, in a district like Savannah, one of our very large districts. Or if he had another
person who had served in the district with civil works only and really had shown a knack for
dealing with outsiders, then he could put him in a civil works only district. Or a person who
had spent all his time with troops could be put in a troop command.
I think he felt that he really wasn't giving up anything, and would have this new opportunity,
and there would certainly not be any two-tiered system of haves and have-nots from the
standpoint of how the Army was going to look at them. Promotion boards and the way
people look at things are Army run, and so it's important to be in the Army system from that
standpoint.
I think he felt maybe, as I had, that perhaps district engineers would not compete for general
officer as well on future boards if the Army saw only troop commands being anointed by the
centralized command selection process. The Army system was to select the best. Therefore,
if you hadn't been to troop command, you weren't going to be, by the Army definition, part
of the "best."
The first year of my two years in the job, engineer troop commands were centrally selected,
and then I slated district engineers for the districts just like had been done previously. My
second year then was the first year that we had a centralized selected slate, and that year then
I took a slate over to the Chief of Engineers. It recommended for his district engineers only
people who had been picked by the centralized command selection board.
There was one minor point of flexibility the Chief lost. As I mentioned before, if there were
twelve districts, we would take over twelve slatees and three or four alternates. He had total
flexibility to leave somebody off and put in an alternate. Under the OPMS system, the Army
system, when you were identified as a command selectee, you would go. A new alternate
would not come in until all selectees were in position.
Now the way the system worked was the board selected a number larger than the positions
available. Then it wasn't very difficult to figure out how we did the rest. They would come
and ask me how many engineer troop positions were to be open in the coming year, and I
would say seven. They took their list of twelve names and then drew a line after seven, and
published those seven names as the selectees. The remaining five all became alternates.
So, that was the drawing of the line. The announcement in the Army Times to the Army was
only selectees, those people above the line that we knew there were commands opening for.
Thus, the Chief of Engineers could not get down to alternates until all the command selectees
were done.
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