Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
In essence, for somebody who thought, "Gosh, I really wish I could get out and train," that
hadn't thought about it enough in advance, to have that kind of opportunity was helpful.
We're not talking small maneuver boxes, either. It was a ready-made FTX. We would then
move the engineer brigade headquarters and one of our bridge battalion headquarters to the
field and we'd stay there for a month and we'd do bridge training on our own and then move
a maneuver brigade or a couple of brigades through an FTX with supporting engineers.
This provided a great point of integration of engineers into the other combined arms from the
standpoint of training activities.
Q:
You mentioned the significance of the REFORGER '77 exercise. You were probably
referring to the fact that the brigade was better prepared and participated more fully, but were
there other significances to that exercise over the one in '76?
A:
Yes. To put it all in context, REFORGER '77 provided the impetus for a lot of things that
have since happened in the engineer force. If you will go back and read the after-action report
for exercise Carbon Edge, the FTX part of REFORGER '77, you'll find that after-action
report refers to a lot of things that are now in the engineer force today.
When I came out of the '76 experience, it was obvious that we had to prepare for an exercise.
Later on, people like Generals Carl Vuono and William Richardson were talking that up in
TRADOC too. That's what we were teaching later at the Engineer School--that leaders have
to prepare a training exercise so it's effective.
At the end of REFORGER '76, to go back to that just for a second, on the last day of the
battle a tank went across a thousand-year-old bridge that wasn't quite wide enough and
kicked out many stones of the bridge. I mean, it was a major GermanAmerican issue
because some tanker ruined a historic bridge. The bridge was closed and General Kroesen
sent out an order saying, "7th Engineer Brigade, go down and put in a bridge overnight so
normal traffic can be ready to cross in the morning."
So, we got this about seven o'clock in the evening and our bridge--the second bridge that I
mentioned--was in the ground. We started pulling it out and pointing people in the direction
of the damaged bridge. We made a quick recon and found out that we didn't have enough
bridge, and it was a very difficult site with one bank very high above the waterline. The
permanent bridge was high enough to hit that bank, but when we put in a float bridge, you
then have to come up the bank, so we would have to do major carving away at the bank. This
would require major coordination with German highway and political authorities.
So, I told General Kroesen that we should not build this bridge. First of all, it would be great
training over time, but it couldn't be done as part of the exercise. It really needed to be
thought out and coordinated with all these other authorities, and we needed to get the right
kind of equipment to the site. If we started that night, in the morning it would be unfinished,
and we would have people upset again because we went ahead and did this without
coordination. He said, "Okay, but I was just trying to find you something to do. I just knew
you didn't feel that you had a very good exercise out here."
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