________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
both the Corps and the battalion, the concept fit very nicely, and it would be total force with
70 percent of the engineers in the reserve components--then both agreed.
Q:
This is as good a time as any to talk about the regiment and your role in getting that
established.
A:
Well, I think it was probably a pivotal role. When I came into this job, my predecessor had,
with the Proponency Office, tried to put together a regimental system of engineer regiments
pretty well based like infantry, that would group battalions into a regiment with a regimental
crest and that sort of thing. Combat heavies would be grouped together, lights grouped
together, and the combat battalions (divisional) would be grouped. Then there was a try to
work it out so a person could have reassignments between different places while serving in
the regiment. For instance, in one regiment the person would rotate between Fort Polk and
Germany, then back to Polk, and so forth. Another regimental rotation might be from Fort
Sill to Korea and back to Sill.
Shortly after I came in, I attended a proponency meeting, in November of 1984. I found the
Chief of Infantry, Major General John Foss, quite unhappy with the way the regimental
system was working, and he felt like challenging the system from the standpoint of infantry.
What he was saying coalesced with my own thoughts too. I didn't like what I saw. What I
didn't like was the fact that already five of those engineer battalions had changed in the force
structure. For example, one combat heavy battalion was now going to become a light
battalion. So, in the regimental grouping within a group of combat heavies, then it wouldn't
fit. More specifically, though, I didn't like the fact that with the officer Corps we were going
to develop specialists who would only know Fort Polk and Germany, and somebody else who
would only know Fort Sill and Korea. I felt that our officer Corps ought to develop and have
a breadth of understanding that was across the board. We ought to know what combat
heavies are like; we ought to know what Corps battalions and divisional battalions are like
and how they interact. I felt strongly there was a real need for that. We don't want
specialists--all light, all heavy, or all combat heavy--and that was exactly what John Foss
was saying. He didn't want all Bradley infantrymen, or all airborne infantrymen; he wanted
people who had more, not fewer, kinds of experience.
In the meantime, there was a lot of ongoing consternation about this new system. Lieutenant
General Bob Elton, who chaired the meeting, held a roundtable about the new regimental
system, and there was considerable discussion on what was involved and what should be
done about it. The DCSPER folks went back and took a relook at it with the Chief of Staff
and, basically, from that, disassociated the assignments part from the Army regimental
system. In other words, no longer would you have to go between Fort Polk and Germany, but
still the idea would be to affiliate with a regiment and have some volunteer kind of home
basing. So, for noncommissioned officers and soldiers, you might well want to buy a home in
the vicinity--voluntary home basing could get them back to Fort Polk if that's where they
wanted to come home to.
As we addressed the engineer regimental system then, when that assignments plan was
removed, our thinking continued to evolve. I'd been dialoguing with General Heiberg, and I
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