________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
entities in the United States Army, that the strength of USACE is in that feeling within the
Corps, civilian primarily, the basic work entity throughout the Corps of Engineers and all of
its districts and labs and every place else. Whatever we did, we did not want to disrupt or
take away from that bonded entity.
Note that I have used the word "bonding" several times because that's what General
Wickham emphasized we wanted. The system was to focus on bonding the unit. I know
General Heiberg felt, and I feel, the obvious bonding of the Nashville District or the
Huntington District in the Ohio River Division. There is a focused feeling that I had when I
was there that I heard General Wickham describe when he was saying, "I want to achieve that
elsewhere." So, we said that we did not want to disrupt that. We did not want to take this
Corps MACOM in and the USACE crest, for instance, and move it over to accompany a
larger entity. We wanted to keep USACE and that crest, patch, all as one entity.
Then the question came in, "How about civilians? Are they part of the Corps and the
regiment or are they not?" After really thinking about that a long time, we decided, no, they
weren't because that's not the definition of the Army regimental system. Is that a problem?
No, it shouldn't be because we've still got USACE, this strong, bonded entity.
So, we looked at the two parts of that and we felt very comfortable with where we were
going and the fact we were not taking away from USACE, nor were we trying put it under. It
stood out there as a major Army command, and we're talking the Corps and we're talking
battalions in the Army regimental system.
Out of all that, we took the think piece that General Heiberg agreed with, boiled it down into
an action paper, and sent it to DCSPER for approval. DCSPER approved it.
Q:
Now you've implemented it all?
A:
Now we've implemented the regimental concept with several significant occasions. One was
the unfurling of the flag. We picked former Chief of Engineers General Fred Clarke and
Sergeant Major of the Army Leon Van Autreve as the first colonel and sergeant major of the
Corps, respectively. We've converted all of the training brigades and battalions at Fort
Leonard Wood and the Engineer School at Fort Belvoir to engineer numbered brigades and
battalions, thereby bringing back the heritage that all of them can enjoy. We have a
committee under the assistant commandant here that's always trying to develop new ways to
try to build in this. I've visited the British Royal Engineers' institution at Chatham to learn
from them. So, we have implemented the engineer regiment, and there are more things yet to
happen, such as trying to emphasize engineer battalion heritage. The Corps is easy because
it's there, but battalions are individual.
I should say, there was one other thing we wanted to do. We wanted that engineer's
affiliation with his or her battalion to be like the infantryman's association with his regiment.
We felt we could not impose upon the battalion commander the same things we imposed
upon the infantry regimental commander as far as maintaining rosters, having a museum, and
doing all of those things. We felt it had to be a little looser than that because some battalions,
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