________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
had it all together, certainly general officer capability, and he stood very high. The other
district engineer selectee was not a matter of differentiation between type of command so
much as his file was strong.
I think General [John W.] Vessey is the one who said, talking to a bunch of new brigadiers at
their charm school session, "You know, if we were flying you out to Fort Sill this afternoon
and the plane went down, we'd just take the next 50 on the list, and they would do just as
well as you will."
My session on the board would validate that. We only got to pick 50. There was another 50
and then some who were certainly qualified and capable.
Q:
Any other questions we need to cover in the '72'74 assignment?
A:
I can't think of anything.
Q:
Who succeeded you?
A:
Tom Sands, and he was followed by Mark Sisinyak.
Q:
When you mentioned General Fiala, I was struck by the fact that we had people in that
position who were all generals later, right? I guess it was an important assignment.
A:
It was and is. Now, there has been a change since then. Not in the quality of people, but it
used to be that the person selected was right out of the War College.
Q:
Okay.
A:
At some point thereafter it changed so that the person selected was just finishing battalion
command but not yet going to the War College. I don't remember when that point was.
Typically, the colonels assignment officer, when finished, went off to a district after that
assignment. Chuck Fiala left and went on to Louisville District. Because he was now past
War College, he would be selected for colonel while in Colonels Division, then left to go off
to command an engineer district.
I broke the scheme because, having convinced the Chief of Engineers to have centralized
command selection, when I was ready to leave I was not yet a colonel and could not be
considered for centralized command selection. So, I didn't, as an irony, get to follow my
predecessors, based on my own recommendation.
One other irony of that is, and I had no insight but just note it as an irony, that, as I
mentioned to you, I had recommended a person only go to one command. Yet, General
Abrams' decision was to let them do both sequentially. Thus, I watched all my friends and
peers, Hank Hatch, Ken Withers, John Wall, Scott Smith, and others, go do both, one after
another. I went off to command the 7th Engineer Brigade, later, with the potential
opportunity of being selected for district engineer as a following assignment. The policy
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