Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
European construction programs. So, the construction side of DCSENGR responsibilities had
really increased.
The things that I had been working on that had taken up most of my time earlier in '78'79
was the rapid reinforcement of NATO initiative, getting the three divisions of POMCUS in,
building the warehouses, getting them sited. All the infrastructure work from before had
basically now been completed. Thus, the separate section that I had set up to handle that
initiative had now gone away.
We were back to a more fundamental split. Installations Division was still working on
stationing and those kinds of responsibilities. Stationing had, from when I was there in '79,
moved from DCSOPS over to the DCSENGR. We had been part of the initial action, but
now it was fundamentally locked into DCSENGR. Installations Division, then, were the ones
who carried the ownership of the stationing requirement. Consequently, as we found out a
year later, when I was Chief of Staff, when it came to starting planning the drawdowns from
Europe, and what stationing changes would happen, Installations Division became a very
integral player in that.
In addition, though, another thing that had just been established when I arrived at DCSENGR
in 1979 was ISAE, the Installation Support Activity, Europe. In 1986, before I arrived in
1987 as the DCSENGR, General Otis had streamlined the headquarters, and he had abolished
ISAE. Remember, I had arrived just after certain implementation and execution
responsibilities were sent to ISAE, leaving only programming and so forth in the
headquarters. I arrived back as DCSENGR in 1987 to have certain things under my
responsibility that weren't there in '79. Primary among that was the support of the facility
engineers in Europe that had been at ISAE.
In '79 General Heiberg, as the DCSENGR, could look down to Charlie McNeill as the
colonel commanding ISAE who would take care of installation facility engineer support. He
would look to the divisions in the headquarters in Heidelberg to take care of the other
responsibilities.
Now, in 1987, I had a facilities engineer support directly under me. It was quite tailored
down. Quite a bit of what had been ISAE was eliminated and not duplicated and pushed to
the field, such as the technical support teams that would go out from ISAE and assist
installations. We no longer had those at USAREUR level. We were to operate at a much
higher kind of level.
We had the environmental expertise and those kinds of things where we would take care of
the programming and policy responsibilities and provide some limited assistance in those
special areas. So, there had been some considerable shift back.
Another change had been the strengthening, over time, of the combat engineer function, even
though the DCSOPS maintained that overall responsibility. The military engineer function
had grown, and we had a colonel in charge, and there was more activity. This was
representative of the knowledge over time that--and this is a key point for all to understand
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