Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
As we engineers, meaning divisional and Corps battalions supporting, did our thinking, it
was always in terms of the combined arms. How do we better the capability of all arms to
fight the battle and how do engineers emplace obstacles to prepare the battlefield in advance
of the fight so that tank and infantry TOW gunners can get a better sight and a better shot?
We planned multiple obstacles and then commanders, maneuver and engineer, had to be
flexible with all the obstacles planned to know where to implement and execute. By that I
mean--this was a major change from my day as a platoon leader, where even though we
planned withdrawal, retrograde operations, and delay operations, it was never quite in the
same terms as the warfighters were now thinking, that is, in terms of positions, alternate
positions, killing grounds, and moving in thrusts and counterthrusts at the speed of armor.
That was a big change.
During general defense planning down at the lower levels, the maneuver commanders would
be saying, "I intend to fight from here and here and here. I want my tank guns here. I want
my TOW gunners there. I want the artillery to focus in this area." Engineers would then sit
with those commanders, figure out that with our assets available we couldn't build every
obstacle, so priortize to build the obstacles effectively, say, to delay them coming up a high-
speed avenue, or plan one in a location that would cause them to move around that obstacle,
which say allows them to no longer use a hill mass as a hide position but pushes them out in
the open ground where our gunners could take them under fire.
It had to be a coordinated ground maneuver and fire power oriented thought process that the
engineer, with the maneuver commander and the artillery gunner, had to think out all
together. So, we used our limited assets to focus on the primary killing area. That would be
the first constructed position and obstacle. Then the maneuver commander would have
another position or an alternate that would then prompt other obstacle combinations. What
we had to get to was a capability, for example, that if we were pulling back at this particular
time, or moving laterally to set up a new kill zone, the maneuver commander would indicate
his intent, "I intend to occupy this position. Once forced out of that, I would occupy over here
but I might change to occupy here a third position." Having declared that intent and then "on
order" during the battle he makes the call that all--maneuver, engineers, artillery--execute.
Engineers couldn't deliver needed support in those days without remotely projecting mines,
without modern tools--couldn't deliver on call like artillery could. So, the engineer would
have to be predicting which operational concept was going to be and work out with the
maneuver commander, "Okay, while you're fighting this fight and I'm fighting it with you,
I'll have some people back preparing this alternate obstacle to support your alternate fighting
positions. You need to know that I need so many hours to do that, and so if you want to pull
back to that one, I'll work on that as your first priority. If you want to go to your second
priority, I won't have that done, so you'll be fighting without the obstacle."
That kind of thought process, you know, magnified by every fire team and battalion out there,
means a lot of those kinds of interactions are going on. That also means there was lots to be
done every day in training and in preparing for the general defense plan.
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