Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
basically did Wildflecken. Of course, they had the 54th Engineer Battalion at Wildflecken all
the time also.
Q:
This will probably be more appropriate later on, but did you have much contact with people
from EUD [Europe Division] when you were at 7th Brigade?
A:
No, almost none. They had an area office in Stuttgart, and we would see each other at the
Society for American Military Engineers meetings and that was about it.
Q:
Anything else about the 7th Brigade command that we should discuss?
A:
Oh, well, surely. Lots. [Laughter] Where do we start?
Q:
I thought before we went to the VII Corps engineer I was interested in--
A:
Well, maybe we ought to talk about VII Corps engineer and then come back and do the two
together because things that happened track together because I'd be commanding the brigade
and then I'd be doing the Corps engineer part. I might be sending a message from the Corps
down for all engineers in the Corps to include the brigade, so I might be sending myself a
message about doing certain things. There was always an interaction between the two, and so
we ought to talk first about the general aspects of the Corps engineer position.
Q:
Okay.
A:
Then we can talk about how things happened because if we want to talk about REFORGER
'76, we'd want to talk about both brigade and Corps engineer aspects of it. So, what would
you like to know about the Corps engineer?
Q:
You had a role in the war planning, planning for combat operations. What's the role of the
engineer in dealing with war planning?
A:
The Corps engineer really has responsibility at the Corps headquarters for all things engineer,
which means he deals quite a bit with the G3 in terms of planning and operations, and quite
a bit with the G4 as a logistician in terms of planning and operations because we really
support across the board those activities.
During peacetime, planning for wartime is one of the major functions that happens there at
Corps headquarters. Whenever the G3 was reworking a plan, mission plan, real-live
contingency plan, or if the G3 was preparing a training exercise, like REFORGER, where
there was a scenario similar to a wartime plan, whichever G3 element was working it--
maybe the wartime planners or the training planners--would call on us, the Corps engineer
section, to provide the Corps engineer input. We had quite an interaction in developing,
recommending, making estimates of the situation, recommending action to the Corps
commander, to the G3 or the G4, chief of staff, as to what the engineer application should
be to support this contingency or that contingency. Then, once decisions were made, the
Corps engineers section would write the engineer part of the operations order or war plan that
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