Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
out and do that, and that means working not only at Belvoir." The way he put it was, "You're
not responsible for just engineers and how combat engineers are taught at Fort Belvoir.
You're responsible for engineers in the total force and how the commandant of the Armored
School instructs in the use of engineers at Knox and the same at the Infantry School at Fort
Benning and at the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth and so forth."
In other words, I was and am responsible as proponent not only for engineers in the total
force, but the engineer functional areas as they are taken care of by the rest of the Army--
mobility, countermobility, survivability, sustainment engineering, and topography. His
challenge to me was to work within the system. He felt that engineers needed to be fixed, I
should go do the fixes, and I should work within the TRADOC context.
I did have one other call and that was with General John A. Wickham, who was Chief of
Staff of the Army at the time. His challenge on a broader scale was, "You're now in charge. I
expect you to set the standards within the engineer force. TRADOC has an important
mission, preparing the Army for war, and thus you'll be doing your part of that. You should
look to try to lighten the force. Seek ways, materiel systems, by which one could lighten
things." He was speaking mostly materiel systems, but also other things.
Q:
Now, did you accept General Richardson's viewpoint that the engineers were broken and had
to be fixed, or did you analyze that and see that that may not have completely been the case
and adjust your reactions?
A:
No, I absolutely believed it to be so. From my experience in the past, I felt that we were the
weak link in the combined arms team; that we had been left behind by the Army in the
modernization efforts; that people did not fully understand, respect, and value the engineers'
role to the combined arms team, primarily because throughout the many places we trained,
like Europe and our REFORGER exercises, we simulated so very much. The white engineer
tape simulates a mine field and simple rules of obstacle engagement provide a nonrealistic
scenario--too short a delay, for example, in front of an obstacle. That takes away the
credence of the contribution of the engineer. Obstacles don't seem like such a battlefield
factor when you simulate it and do away with it so easily. So, I felt that engineers had not
kept pace with the rest of the Army. We were woefully deficient in organization design and
equipment, primarily. We had great esprit--all of our troops were doing their damnedest--
but we really had not kept pace. The Army had not allowed the engineers to keep pace with
the rest of the combined arms team.
So, I agreed with General Richardson. Importantly, when he was talking to me, I recognized
that he also understood those things.
Q:
Did you set yourself a series of specific goals or objectives, then, to try to remove these
problems?
A:
No, I didn't establish any series of objectives or goals. I really worked within the rather
macro objectives and goals that were already established, but it all blended together rather
nicely. First of all, the TRADOC mission--prepare the Army for war; be an architect for the
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