Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
The other so-called hat comes from the fact that doctrinally and by organization the Corps
engineer brigade commander operates also as the Corps engineer--that is, the senior engineer
staff officer of the Corps commander. It was similar to a division, where the engineer
battalion commander is the division engineer and has at the division staff a major, the
assistant division engineer major. The Corps engineer, the brigade commander, has on the
Corps' staff a colonel, the assistant Corps engineer. So, that was my third hat--Corps
engineer. I was the Corps commander's engineer staff officer. For that role there were about
ten to twelve people who worked at Kelly Barracks with a lieutenant colonel or a colonel, the
assistant Corps engineer, who was the day-by-day operator in that position.
So, those were the three hats--brigade commander, Corps engineer, and military community
commander.
Q:
Let's talk a minute, again maybe with some questions on the command of the 7th Engineer
Brigade. This is in the late '70s, in the post-Vietnam period. I wonder if you could comment
on the several aspects of the battalion under you--training, discipline, morale, these sorts of
issues. What shape was the Army in during this period in terms of combat readiness, training,
and these sorts of things?
A:
I'd say at that time the Army's position was one of emerging from the bottom of its depths
after Vietnam. Certainly it's been well-written of the many problems in Europe during
Vietnam where commanders had few resources and few people to work with and also had
many troops who had come out of Vietnam, out of combat, many bringing with them drug
problems. There were racial tensions and all kinds of problems in the early '70s. That had
bottomed out by the time I arrived and was on an up trend. There are others who certainly get
credit for this, but General Blanchard gets a great share of the credit. He had made the
community commander and troop commander the same person so that morale, discipline,
order, and support kinds of things could all be addressed.
Some regulations were being changed so the Army could deal more effectively with
druggies; that is, urinalysis testing was starting and we were modifying the rules for
discharges, so it was easier for commanders to deal with and discharge the misfits and the
malcontents. We were starting to emerge from Vietnam, and there was a little more stability,
and people were starting to work to train noncommissioned officers and this sort of thing.
I heard an awful lot of stories from folks who had been recent company commanders and
were still in the brigade's battalions about how bad it had been just the year before or just
two years before. That is why I'm saying it was emerging because there were some
conditions that weren't the best, but it certainly wasn't as it had been, for example, where in
Bamberg an officer just had difficulty walking the streets safely. You know, garbage cans
thrown out of windows nearly missing somebody entering the building, tires slashed
repeatedly, things like that--really representative of a low state of discipline. Those kinds of
events were in the past by the time I arrived.
I found within the command leadership structure a really positive attempt to recognize and
deal with that. General Blanchard was a very positive person, just was ebullient about
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