________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Q:
What about troop construction projects? Was there much use of troop labor for construction
projects while you were there?
A:
Yes, there was, quite a bit. Now, the 18th Brigade had as its mission, of course, to do troop
construction, but Corps engineer brigades had considerable activity doing that as well.
Specifically--this is a good place to put it in--one of the things about the 7th Engineer
Brigade was its very large geographical spread.
With six battalions and all of those
companies, we really were spread all over
the southern German map. As I mentioned,
we had a composite battalion in
Kornwestheim with us and the ADM
company. We had a combat battalion at
Aschaffenburg, the 9th. We had the 82d
Engineer Battalion (Combat) in Bamberg,
the 237th Engineer Battalion (Combat) at
Heilbronn, and we had another composite
battalion in Karlsruhe, which had the
bridge companies. When I started off, there
was a float bridge company down in
Nellingen all by itself. The other battalion
was the 78th Engineer Battalion (Combat),
which was located at Ettlingen, which is
right outside Karlsruhe.
Then there was a combat support
equipment
company
located
at
Grafenwhr. V Corps had a combat
support equipment company located at
Wildflecken. The two companies were
there to do range maintenance and
construction at the training areas, so they
had their equipment out on the tank trails
all the time doing work.
We had summer construction programs
Colonel Kem, Commander of the 7th
where we would rotate combat battalions
Engineer Brigade, addressed soldiers
through the major training areas--that is,
of the 78th Engineer Battalion on
Wildflecken and Grafenwhr. We would
30 November 1977.
send a combat battalion for six weeks to do
construction projects and training at the major training areas. They would get in range time
and required training, things like that, and they would work on building ranges, knocking
down ranges, fixing things, and that sort of thing. Hohenfels was part of that program as
well, along with Grafenwhr. So, we basically supported Graf, Hohenfels, and V Corps
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