________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
back to Europe. This conversation was taking place in probably the JanuaryFebruary time
frame.
At the same time, he asked me to suggest my replacement, and I told him I thought my
replacement should be Dan Schroeder, who had a very strong combat engineer background.
However, at the time he was only a brigadier general, and I also indicated then that General
Reno, serving as a major general, would be appropriate too. I knew that General Reno had
very strong bonds with General Vuono and General Thurman, and that would be helpful in
our progressing and bringing to decision the EForce concept because I thought all the
groundwork had been laid. What we needed was to really get in with those two decision
makers and push it through. I sensed that, having pushed it so hard, that my own credibility
with the two of them was a little bit suspect, even though we had a lot of other nonengineers,
combat arms types, speaking for EForce. Nevertheless, they were being rather difficult to
push the concept through. So, I thought General Reno was in a perfect position to do that.
As it turned out, General Reno was appointed my successor, but he only stayed a year, and
General Schroeder, having been promoted, then followed him. So, that was an early
conversation. Then, I suppose shortly thereafter, I talked with General Heiberg, the Chief of
Engineers, and told him essentially the same thing. He indicated that he thought nothing
would be changing at Headquarters, USACE, and thought he'd like to see me go over to
Europe to be the DCSENGR. So, I told him that sounded fine to me, and then I let things
happen.
How it happened, after that, must have been conversations between General Heiberg and the
General Officer Management Office, or General Heiberg and the Commander in Chief in
Europe. I was nominated and accepted, and that was it.
Then in July I replaced Major General Scott Smith, who was the DCSENGR in Europe.
Q:
The USAREUR commander then was General Otis?
A:
Yes, Glenn Otis. General Fiala was the Chief of Staff at the time, of course also with an
engineer background.
Q:
A sort of broad question, but how had DCSENGR changed since you'd been there in '78,
'79? DCSENGR itself, I guess the USAREUR staff agency?
A:
Well, I guess things had changed. Now that I think about it, there were several things that had
changed. First of all, as mentioned, I had been the Chief of Installations and Construction
Division as a colonel, and that certainly was a two-colonel job. Subsequently, after a year or
so, it had gone back, and so there now was an Installations Division and a Construction
Division. That better divided responsibilities so you could have the right amount of attention
to each.
Next, the construction mission had grown considerably in that the program was so much
bigger. I left there in '79 and, as I mentioned, participated back in the Army Staff prior to the
start of the Reagan administration. The Reagan defense buildups had led to much-increased
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