Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
wheeled brigade. We ran around in trucks trying to support tank and mechanized divisions
who were in tanks and armored personnel carriers. We couldn't go cross-country like they
could--we were an all-wheeled force.
We were also lacking total communications. I did not have a signal node assigned. Corps
signal provided communications nodes to the other major subordinate commands of the
Corps--that is, the two divisions, the Corps artillery, the Corps support command. All those
other major support elements had a signal node in the field that really tied them into the
Corps communications net. I didn't have one of those that came with us, and we were often
out of contact with the great distances in VII Corps. You have to recognize how big VII
Corps was even compared to V Corps in land area, stretching all the way from the Czech
border back to Stuttgart and then its width between II German Corps in the south and V
Corps to the north--quite large. That's also why we had the 1st Infantry Division (Forward)
as another combat element besides the two divisions that V Corps also had.
In combat capability I think with what we had we were capable, but we lagged and lacked
critical things that inhibited our capability to go to war as engineers to properly support the
Corps.
At the time I arrived, we still had the M4T6 bridge and the Bailey bridge; all vehicles were
wheeled; and we had dozers and so forth--so we've come a long way since then.
In the Army of its day, within the capability of the rest of the Army, we were probably
commensurate with it except for the fact that engineers had never been fixed--doctrinally,
organizationally, or properly equipped--really since after the war until then. These would
later be the things that prompted EForce and were never fixed until EForce was
implemented.
Q:
So, you could see some similarities with your first tour there when you were a young officer?
Some of the problems you saw the first time around still were evident?
A:
I think my ability to start running in the 7th Brigade really went back to my good upbringing
and initiation in the 23d Engineer Battalion, 3d Armor Division, V Corps, years before. That
experience, being part of the combined arms team, was ingrained in me. I was back on the
German terrain and we were back doing the things I knew. I knew what the platoon leaders
were doing trying to support their mech infantry or tank cross-reinforced task forces. I had
just moved up a couple of echelons but, in essence, the divisions and the Corps were doing
the same things. The kind of REFORGER exercise we had in '76 and '77 were not dissimilar
from the basic things that we had in the FTX Winter Shields and Sabre Knots of '58 and '59
in terms of being in the field, interacting, part of the combined arms team, and that sort of
thing.
So, both the good things and the bad things related back. Yes, we were wheeled back then,
and we were still wheeled in terms of the Corps battalions.
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