Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
Q:
We had said your description when you were in the Pentagon earlier, that to an officer or a
civilian, I guess, certainly on the Army Staff, life is a hectic one, with long, unpredictable
days, middle-of-the-night sorts of meetings. I'm sure it's worse for a green suiter perhaps
than for a civilian, but pretty frenetic.
A:
Well, Al Carton always used to put in those same kind of hours.
Q:
Same kind of hours?
A:
Yes, and John Sheehey put in long, tough hours, and then others too, so it wasn't just green-
suit types. You're right; you're driven by a process and decisions and that calendar that keeps
grinding on. The PPBES system says the Office of the Secretary of Defense is going to do
something on a date and the services have to answer if they want to count by that date. You
get certain actions and you have so many hours--36 hours or 48 hours--to answer, and that's
a window that has to be made to include all the coordination, getting every other Deputy
Chief of Staff to sign up all the way up through the Vice Chief and Chief of Staff. I mean, a
lot of wickets in there for 36 hours.
Q:
When you were promoted, you still were in a colonel's slot, weren't you?
A:
Yes.
Q:
So, they didn't make that a brigadier general slot at the time--so you were sort of beginning
to look for a job pretty early on while you were in the ACE's slot, I guess. Or were other
people looking for a job for you, maybe?
A:
General Morris told me early after my selection for brigadier general that he was going to
leave me for the year, and I think he said that in the sense that I ought to complain if I wanted
to. I really wanted to stay. I had come to the ACE knowing what was there and knew I was a
natural because of the Europe job we've talked about before. I thought I had things to
contribute, and it would have been a shame for everybody if I had left in midyear. I mean,
that would have just been more turmoil for the organization. They wouldn't have been able
to take the value of my contribution--what I brought to the organization from Europe.
I certainly learned an awful lot that year on how the Army system worked, the ins and outs of
fighting the battles in the Pentagon and the programming and budgeting system. That helped
me immeasurably later on when I was Engineer School commandant at Fort Belvoir. I mean,
as the Deputy ACE I had participated and fought the battles on the mine program and UET
[universal engineer tractor --later the M9 ACE] funding. From the ACE's perspective, I
watched those working in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Research and
Development, and how they worked issues. I sat next to the Research and Development guy
when he did his thing at the Program Budget Committee meetings. I didn't throw on the table
issues on funding for mine programs or the UET; the Research and Development guy
covered those. Those were his bailiwicks, not mine to mess with. I could always educate
people, make sure they understood what was right or wrong about an engineer issue, or be
able to receive intelligence that they were planning a cut in those kinds of programs so that
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