Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
General Kem (center, right) and Lieutenant General Elvin R. Heiberg III, Chief of
Engineers, observed a test of the M9 ACE during the summer of 1985.
Q:
Okay, to proceed then, want to talk about your role in evolving the engineers' role in AirLand
Battle during your time here as a commandant, how that's evolved?
A:
Well, I think we have really defined the engineers' role on the AirLand battlefield in the last
three years. The process had started. People were working on manuals; people were doing
some of the doctrinal thinking. In many cases I think we were wedded too much to looking at
things, again, from engineer eyes.
Part of the problem with engineers and how we look at things is that we bring up our brood
from many different directions. We've got light engineers and heavy engineers, but so does
infantry. We have divisional engineers and nondivisional Corps engineers, and infantry
doesn't really do that. I mean, they may have a separate infantry brigade that might find a rear
area mission at Corps, but basically they're all doing the same general thing, and all the
tankers are found forward. We also have combat heavy engineers. If we put people out in all
those arenas and they do things in those different environments, you can get different
engineer mindsets as to what engineers "do" and how they "do it."
One engineer may think the world is construction and building ranges at Grafenwhr during
peacetime. One may be in a place where he or she is in a combat heavy engineer battalion on
a divisional post and you run out and build antitank ditches with tractor-scrapers and think
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