Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
bridges they put in. Engineers conducted eight river crossings and installed over 2,000
obstacles.
We were able to say that because of the way we were watching the battle, that the difference
in approach of the three different brigades of the 3d Mech Infantry Division, the orange
force, reflected the interaction of brigade commander and the engineer. In one case the
brigade commander didn't do anything without his engineer's input--close integration. In
another case the brigade commander would listen when the engineer could get the door open.
In the third case the brigade commander just kept his engineer away. The success of the three
in terms of what happened in the battle reflected their relative interaction. The first brigade
commander was able to maneuver and did better in his obstacle plans and coordination
compared to the other two.
The Corps commander made a statement at the end of the battle. One of his observations,
unsolicited--that means he didn't get it from me--was that he felt that the relative ability of
blue forces in the defensive phases as opposed to the orange forces was because the blue
forces did a better job of reinforcing terrain, combining obstacles and fires.
In one notable instance, the 1st Infantry Division developed an effective killing zone. They
called engineers together with their maneuver folks, established a fire trap across from where
orange would cross the river. The next morning as that orange brigade moved forward, they
were caught in the fire trap--they ran into many obstacles and were caught in the cross-fires
of 1st Infantry's tanks, TOW missiles, and artillery and were annihilated.
The G3 of 1st Infantry Division was Colonel Bill Reno, who had left command of the
engineer battalion and moved to be the G3. He had an engineer's understanding of using
terrain, maneuver, and fires. Ted Vander Els was commanding the 9th Engineer Battalion in
direct support of the 1st Division. Ted was the commander who spent the night down there
with a couple of his companies putting in the obstacles that were the hold-ups, the stoppers,
that would spring that fire trap. So, that was the Felheim fire trap.
We had several interesting things happen, all of which carried teaching points. As orange ran
for the river, the covering force on the east side of the river, which was expected to delay
about 18 hours, collapsed. Orange moved over the terrain quickly and reached the river line
in 4 or 5 hours, instead of the 18. Then, when orange pulled up to the river and called up their
bridges and follow-on forces, they didn't bother to tell them where the mine fields were that
the tanks and infantry had bypassed or breached. So, the bridging, which would have
facilitated an early, quick crossing, got caught up in the obstacles and couldn't get through to
the river. So, although the combatant force moved and reached the river line early, its
capability to cross was not brought up commensurate with it and got caught up in the
obstacles that had been bypassed, once again making my point that training to be realistic
must cover the depth of the battlefield.
On the other side, the Corps commander did an interesting thing for us. I've got to back up a
minute and say we took the 7th Engineer Brigade headquarters to the field, unlike the year
before. We rented a village and were established in buildings with our communications
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