________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
than 30 minutes. We invited the brigade commander, Colonel [Roger Charles] Strom, in on
Mondays and any other day he felt that he ought to be there to talk about something.
After that we then very typically went through a busy day involved with decisions, decision
briefs, or meetings. It may well involve a trip to the Pentagon to meet with an Army staffer. I
would go over to the congressional staff to meet with them or it might be to AMC for a
meeting there. It might well involve my going to the brigade or to the school to see training
or a class. It would most certainly involve a couple of hours, at least, spent on combat
developments, either by their coming here to talk over some issues and getting guidance or
being on the phone talking to six or eight people about some materiel item that there were
issues with.
Invariably, I did very little paperwork during the day. I would typically use that time for
interaction with subordinates, be they base operations, school, combat developments, or
training, so that we could keep the business of the school moving on. Typically I took home a
briefcase or two in the evening; on weekends three or four. I did most of the paperwork in the
evening until 11:00, primarily because the daytime was for subordinates, giving them
guidance, hearing what they had to say, trying to lead them, giving them perspective, guiding
them in what was going on.
Oftentimes, once a week, we'd have a reception in the evening for the officers advanced
course.
Q:
How much has the lack of a brigadier general as the assistant commandant hurt you?
A:
I think it's hurt us considerably because a lot of times I go to meetings because I feel that we
have to be there with a general officer, and I find the assistant commandant of the Infantry
School or the assistant commandant of the Artillery School are covering that meeting. What
that really means is that the commandant could be somewhere else, thus doing two things
that require the presence of a general officer. I think what that means is our assistant
commandant, being a colonel, is pushed down and does two tiers of things. At one tier, the
lower tier, he's running the day-by-day activities of the school, which really should be done
by a deputy assistant commandant. At the other tier, the upper tier, he has difficulty getting
into some of those arenas just because he's a colonel; shouldn't be that way, but that's the
way it is. So, when you look at the Aviation, Artillery, Air Defense, Signal, Infantry, Armor
Schools--all have brigadier assistant commandants. You can see that that's a problem for us.
We've got the National Capital Region; we've got the place where the Secretary of the Army
decides to come down and plant a tree one day and other things that engage our time.
Q:
How do you go about trying to restore that, or is it possible with the Army's general officer
loss then?
A:
Of course everybody wants general officers. The fact is that it will be solved when we move
to Fort Leonard Wood. The brigadier general at Fort Leonard Wood now is an infantryman.
After the school move, that will become an engineer brigadier and be additionally the
assistant commandant.
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