________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
exercise." So, then, at the Corps commander's emphasis, did that mean that there wasn't an
obstacle or two bypassed? No, but it meant that we did better than other times.
Another thing we did was to bring adequate bridging to the battlefield. We wanted it there so
it could be used when needed. We pulled bridging out of bridge storage parks and moved it
down and set up a bridge depot, or bridge park, which would represent where we normally
stocked bridging in various parts of the Corps' rear and at storage depots. We did that behind
each division, in the Corps' rear of both blue and orange forces. We brought some people
down from V Corps and some of our people who weren't in the playing units to run the
parks. So, they had bridging available, panel bridge and other bridging that they could issue.
So, when X knew they were going to need to put in a bridge, they could draw that bridge and
go put it in--no saying if it was available we would put it in. It was available.
Then we played the scenario so we had crews who could go up and take out a bridge and
bring it back to the park. So, a unit who was on the advance didn't have to stop,
administratively pull down a bridge they had put in tactically, and thus be out of the flow of
the tactical combined arms operation.
We tried to play damaged rear areas with interrupted main supply routes. Now, if I can jump
ahead again, for example, on one of the days of the exercise we destroyed a major bridge in
the rear of the 3d Infantry Division. I'm talking major. The 79th Engineer Battalion got the
responsibility to replace the bridge. They ended up putting in a doubletriple Bailey--big--
over quite a gap. It took them two and a half days to do it. They had to bring in major
equipment items to carve down one of the bank approaches. I mean, it was a major
undertaking. During the time they were building that bridge, the destroyed bridge (simulated)
was closed and not used as a main supply route. There was at that point a 14-kilometer
logistic detour for 3d Infantry Division logistic troops to go around.
We effectively, within the FTX, broke the main supply route and caused it to be fixed. The
real bridge was used by all the German citizens that needed to cross and that came to watch
all the activity building the bridge, but it was not used as the main supply route--realistic in
terms of battlefield requirements. So, we worked hard on making realism happen.
Corps' general defense planning had been completed; we had new battalion commanders in;
the relationships with the divisions were jelling that we have been talking about. We really
had a bright bunch of commanders aboard who worked together well, and so another thing
we did was we started anticipating the FTX and how we would interact and support the
Corps.
We sent a lot of people down to recon the maneuver area that was south of the autobahn
between Stuttgart and Augsburg. We reconned bridge crossing sites so we could try to make
sure things happened. There were major autobahns down there and there was a section where
the Iller river was bermed and we could not cross there. We were going to have to have rules
to realistically simulate a river crossing in that section. We tried to find ways so things didn't
have to be simulated. As much as possible, we wanted to make things have to happen. That
was ingrained into our approach.
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