________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
I have one more thing to mention. It really ties to something that becomes very emotional
each year, and that was brigadier general selection because when the lists are announced,
everybody has their analysis of why everybody was selected or not selected.
While I was in the Colonels Division, I watched that process. A lot of people called me up
and lamented their own nonselection or wondered why so and so had been selected. So, there
were many opportunities for dialogue along this line. I remember this particular year that we
had a lot of engineers selected--five.
I remember at least two calls afterwards; one of them said, "Well, enough of this OPMS
selection business. Obviously you have to be a troop commander to be selected for brigadier
general."
Then another called up and said, "Obviously you have to be a district engineer to get
selected."
It turned out that that year the selectees included a couple of district engineers, a few who
had been troop commanders, and Ernie Peixotto, who had done neither but commanded an
engineer lab, the Waterways Experiment Station, which was not then centralized command
selected.
So, much for everyone's reading of the tea leaves.
Q:
You didn't become involved in the brigadier general selection except to get this feedback
from the colonels you had contact with?
A:
No. Our drill each year was to go through the files before we sent them to the board to make
sure that they were straight. We all knew those that we felt were very strong candidates and
we knew who the top fifteen or twenty were--who could end up being a top four or five. We
would do our own analysis of the files that were to compete.
We would look at their picture and make our own analysis of whether that picture
represented what that individual thought he would be seen as.
We'd call him up and say, "You really don't want to go in with a picture like that. You really
ought to get your picture retaken." So, this was the same kind of thing that the Engineer
Branch does at all levels.
We basically just tried to make sure the file was correct before it went to the board.
Then, once we got the names of those selected, we'd dash out and read the file and copy
whatever we needed out of it--because it was gone immediately to the General Office
Management office. So, any residual analysis we wanted to do, we had to do it quickly.
Q:
Did that include any attempt to make the files better another time, based on the outcome from
the file?
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