________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Q:
You might talk about some of the DEH issues that may have come up to DCSENGR, that
DCSENGR may have been involved in. I understand one of the issues was heating
conversion, coal to oil and district heating. Was that an issue that you got involved in?
A:
Oh, a little bit, but not too much because it was well under way during my years there. It was
nearly completed. My predecessors had laid all the groundwork, done all the things, and the
procedures were well in place. They weren't all converted, but it was all happening. I spent
next to no time on it because it was really essentially done.
We had a person on the staff who tracked it. We'd get briefed and we'd follow up the review
of contracts and that sort of thing. It was not an issue, which is the way you posed the
question.
Q:
Right. What sorts of DEH issues tended to come to your attention at the USAREUR level?
A:
Well, staffing of people, getting the right kind of people down into the key positions. Again,
the Corps and the communities were involved in that because they had the people.
A lot of our interactions had to do with determining next year's construction program, where
we could go with things, and the Corps would come up and try to justify their budget dollars
to us. So, that was a lot of our interaction, and I would suppose some would call those issues.
Others might call it everyday life.
Q:
Standard interaction.
A:
I think I mentioned earlier, about my other USAREUR experience, that a major Army
command is a very interesting and important place to be. USAREUR headquarters was a very
dynamic place, and a lot of good folks toiled to do the right thing. A MACOM headquarters
is really a swing point in the Army's structure, especially in terms of USAREUR.
FORSCOM and TRADOC had it as well, in the terms I'm going to describe, but I think
being in a forward Army deployed, the separation of the ocean and the time difference
seemed to make it different.
At the MACOM headquarters, we were the ones who interacted with the field, and we put
together the programs for the command based on their input. So, the people in muddy boots,
the BDUs, the folks in the trenches, the battalions, divisions, and their communities would
then see a cut in their programs and their initiatives and would come up to us. Then we had
to look downward and analyze and pull out things and package it for the Commander in
Chief so that, then, he could take it forward, or we would take it forward and be able to sell it
to the Army Staff.
So, we at USAREUR headquarters were really the swing from the BDU Army to the green
suit Army, representing the Pentagon. We had to translate programs from the field, package
them so they made sense and could attract the dollar in the Pentagon. At the same time, once
the dollar was allocated from the Pentagon, we had to take back from the green suit Army
and translate it and remold it into the working programs to send back to the field, both the
pluses and to allocate the shortage. Some people's aspirations were not going to be met. Yet,
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