Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
That's somebody that the Director of the Army Staff could call down to, a colonel-level
person, and work the whole organization. You didn't have to have the generals present in
those other places--their executive officer fielded the ball and pulled in whichever director
was responsible. Whereas, with a major, typically you're going to get a good professional and
the best kind of person, but he can't be directing a bunch of higher level people. So, we were
short in that regard. That's been corrected over the years now that the ACE has a colonel.
Q:
Was there any effort at that time to push for a change, or did that not really come up?
A:
Well, I was clamoring for it. I think General Read was just happy that he now had a second
general and things were happening to keep him happy. You should recognize one other thing.
At that time, Military Programs was a directorate within USACE. General Wray headed that,
and General Read was listed as Deputy Director for Requirements and Programs as the ACE.
General Sisinyak was Deputy Director for Facilities Engineering--the old separate
Directorate of Facilities Engineering had been placed under Military Programs to provide a
stem-to-stern Army facilities directorate. Military Programs Directorate would take facilities
from original concept, installation planning in the ACE's shop, through programming and
budgeting for the construction, then construction, and then over to facilities engineering and
housing. The Military Programs Directorate would do the construction through its military
construction districts. Thus, General Wray had two deputies, but he was not the rater of the
ACE. The ACE was rated by the Chief of Engineers directly. Whereas General Sisinyak was
with Military Programs in Headquarters, USACE, of course the ACE was in the Pentagon.
I don't know how I got on to that, but I was trying to make a point.
Q:
Well, the interaction between the ACE and Military Programs.
A:
Yes, you have to keep that in mind to understand then how the ACE operated because the
ACE was, and I was, as mentioned, the person who went to the Program Budget Committee
and brought the programs together. Yet, the people who did the facility engineering and the
housing components of the program worked over in the Forrestal Building. So, we would
have to pull them over to meet with us so we could put all the numbers together. We weren't
doing that too well back at that time. We worked a lot that year to try to make that program
wrap up better.
Later organizational changes sought to bring those facilities components and housing
components to the ACE so we would have a better tie. There were some thoughts of moving
them. Later, there was a facilities programmer and a housing programmer added to Al
Carton's Programming Division shop, trying to make the ACE more effective in the
programming business.
Anyway, I was the deputy. After me and the changes, Jerry Hilmes had come in to replace
Sisinyak, who had replaced John Wall. After I left the ACE, it was decided to take the
brigadier general facility engineer position out of Military Programs and bring it over to be
the Deputy ACE. This formalized the position--I was there in a colonel position but a
serving brigadier--to give it the clout of the two generals. Brigadier General Jerry Hilmes
254
Previous Page
