________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
The tough part comes when you start working the margin just above and just below the "cut"
line. How difficult that is, comparing a couple of different people, because now you're really
in the middle of it.
I believe the Army system is such that we make each individual make his/her own record.
That is, their personnel file really does have a word picture of them. The system works pretty
well--especially when you take a board that has twenty-five different people looking at
individuals' files and doing all that kind of scoring. The other thing I found was there was
pretty darn good unanimity in the way things were.
I mean, it's not that one board member puts a person in the top group, and another puts him
in the bottom group. They'll all put him in the top group or maybe one will have him at the
bottom of the top group and the other one will have him at the top of the middle group.
When a board member looks at a file, he starts having that image of the baseline. Even
though we come from the engineers, infantry, military intelligence, ordnance--we sit down
in a group thinking of the common good of the Army and start scoring records. It comes out
and it works out.
Q:
Was battalion commander seen as one of those tough jobs that was important?
A:
Yes. Of course, the time frame that I'm talking about, '72'74, was right after the Vietnam
War period, so that was definitely seen as one of those kinds of tough jobs. A command
anywhere--I mean, there was a recognition that command in Europe might have been
tougher than command in Vietnam because the resources had been reduced so. We had
battalion commanders in Europe with one major, maybe, and one captain, most of the folks
being lieutenants commanding companies.
That's what I had when I commanded Vietnam, too; I had two majors, but at one time I had
five lieutenants. That was when you made captain in two years.
I mean, that growing Army had had a lot of that, but certainly the resources were toward me
in Vietnam and not toward Europe. I had my own things to deal with in command in
Vietnam, particular problems and folks shooting. The person in Europe was sitting there, too,
with people who had come out of the Vietnam culture, some of them with the problems they
brought with them, and then went back into a disciplined arena and really fought that.
So, the folks commanding in Europe were without the money to keep the troops out training,
keeping everybody occupied. Some of them would have bad habits such as alcohol and drugs
and were not worried about a mundane training day. Always working on a surge basis, the
commanders in Europe had to deal with some very difficult problems.
I think the system recognized that command in Europe was tough. The Army does have a
way of looking at what went on, and over all those years, so many people had been to
Vietnam that that had to be a very significant point--commanding at battalion level for
purposes of selection to colonel, or commanding at colonel level for purposes of selection to
brigadier general.
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