Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
Everybody, all engineer units, went down on a recon. We already had a technique that started
long before I got there of having engineer map exercises where all of the engineer battalion
commanders in the Corps--and there were eight plus the Corps engineer and brigade staffs--
would come to Kornwestheim. The commanders would bring their S3s and S4s. Our
headquarters had its own small airfield right outside the Pattonville housing area. It had a
hangar and was quite convenient. We'd move all our helicopters out of the hangar and then
we'd move in tables. We would set up all of the engineers from the Corps in the hanger--
that included the divisional ones. We'd set up bleachers and we would run map exercises to
run through the general defense plan.
While we had been revising the general defense plan and planning how we were going to
fight in the forward defense, we would come in and exercise our plans. We would say,
"Okay, now it's D minus 2; where's the 9th Engineer Battalion?" The 9th Engineer Battalion
commander or S3 would come up and tell everyone what they were doing and what they
would be expecting to do over the next day and a half. Then we would have others present
similarly. We were map-thinking it out, as we withdrew along certain lines, as we attacked
back of a line or took various Corps kinds of actions that we would anticipate and describe.
So, the S3, the S4, and the commander were able to think on the ground how they
expected to be employed in the battle.
Our staff, both brigade and Corps, could then think out how that interacted with things that
were going on. That kind of exercise was very useful in our general defense planning.
As we approached REFORGER '77, we conducted engineer map exercises on the terrain that
we were going to train on. We anticipated the exercise maneuver. We knew that orange
forces were to attack initially and they were going to attack up to the Iller River line.
Meanwhile, blue forces, with reinforcements coming from the States, would be ordered in to
defend the Iller River line with a Cav screen in front of the arriving 1st Infantry Division.
After that, there would be a fight between orange and blue. Orange would cross the river and
attack, pushing blue back to a certain point. Then blue would counterattack, restore the
ground before the river, recross the Iller River, and move forward.
Having that concept, we could then do our own map exercise. The battalions on the orange
side would describe what they anticipated during a particular phase; then the blue forces
would also. We were able to pretty well war-game out the exercise day by day with expected
maneuver and supporting engineer interactions.
Now, we knew there were a lot of problems in the engineer force, things I've talked about.
We knew that one major problem was that we were wheeled Corps engineers trying to
support mechanized forces. We had certain objectives that we thought and wanted to make
sure that our exercise validated the point. So, we sort of scoped out the after-action report in
advance--with the objectives that we thought would be proven. Because they were such
obvious shortcomings, they ought to be recorded when they came out. One thing we knew we
would be able to show was that Corps engineers need to be mechanized on the modern
battlefield. Everybody had that in mind.
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