Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
About that time there was to be a project in Rock Island called REARM [renovation of
armament manufacturing], which was a major redoing of the factory up there, which cast the
breaches for our Army howitzers. They brought in the howitzer tubes from Watervliet
Arsenal. Then they did the assembly for certain of our weapons--the 155-mm and 8-inch
howitzers. It was almost a Civil War operation, when I saw how they were doing it--pouring
the molds and machining the breach and everything else. I thought of all the old black and
things out and using modern machinery to do things. So, the Army Materiel Command
[AMC] and the Armaments Command had a plan to redo that whole factory complex in a
three-phase operation.
We thought that an appropriate dividing line for military construction boundaries would give
us Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. There weren't any
military construction activities in West Virginia, maybe some future reserve centers.
Q:
Michigan?
A:
Michigan because there was one of our tank plants, and there were some Air Force
installations in Michigan as well. We were also doing real estate in some places, so we really
felt that that would be an appropriate thing.
So, we carved out that as our desired area of operation for military construction. Then we
went to school to figure out how everyone else did their military construction mission. That
meant, how does Omaha do project management? How does Baltimore do it, and how does
everybody else do it? We more or less put together a package--you might call it a bid
proposal--on how we thought it was in the best interests of the Corps that the Ohio River
Division get back in the military construction business, with Louisville its executing district
to take care of military construction and real estate in the area described above.
After that came quite an internal debate facilitated by Drake Wilson. You might have called
it a fight, with "losing divisions" arguing not to lose their areas and, of course, us saying,
"Well, we really ought to do it because it's in the best interests of the Corps."
Eventually, then, the decision was made to give us military construction.
Q:
One of the things that was said--I don't know if this is part of the bargaining or whatever
because it would have happened anyway, no doubt--was that you placed an area office at
Rock Island specifically because of concerns that came out in this debate from the Missouri
River Division that you couldn't handle the project, that they had the expertise for the
complex construction that was going on there. Does that sound about right?
A:
Yes, but let me put it in context.
Q:
Okay.
A:
We had a professional disagreement with Baltimore District, North Atlantic Division, and
with Mobile District, South Atlantic Division, on mission transfers of Fort Campbell and
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