________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
quite against it. The federal government was quite for us at the speaking level, but down at
the Korte operational level, he would always seem to bring up a new obstacle--"Don't
worry; as soon as I solve this one, we can move." Then when we'd solve that one, then
there'd be another new thing that he had to take care of.
As for the eighteen trees, we offered to plant five for one. They were all scrub, a couple or
three inches in diameter, maybe a few larger than that. We offered to plant wherever would
make the best screen for the populace, and that wasn't satisfactory. So, it just never got
resolved.
Meanwhile, then, we wanted the Apache helicopters to come over, and they arrived and were
coming down the Rhine by barge. We brought them into Mannheim, where we could have
the aviation maintenance folks there assemble them, and then they were to fly to Wiesbaden.
However, we only got two to Wiesbaden before there was an injunction that enjoined us from
moving more. This prompted several trips by me to Bonn, trying to elicit the assistance of
our ambassador and trying to work with the ministries to try to get permission so that we
could move the rest of our Apaches into Wiesbaden.
By now, I had moved up to be Chief of Staff and General Saint had taken over as the
Commander in Chief. General [George A.] Joulwan, currently SOUTHCOM commander,
was the V Corps commander. He had been the DCSOPS, and General Joulwan and I had
come back to visit our Army Staff and the Joint staff, and over to the Department of State,
trying to obtain high-level, high-ground kind of approaches to get the governments to allow
us to get all of these modernizations completed. We were trying to break the logjam, get
them out of the low staff level obstacles and get them up to the major political level for
resolution.
So, by this time I'd become Chief of Staff; General Joulwan was now V Corps commander
and was working with the Hesse state president. Because I'd been so involved as DCSENGR,
I continued as the prime point of contact on the Wiesbaden issue, but we really now had the
whole USAREUR staff involved. Jerry Moeller, a civilian who worked in the Host Nation
Support Directorate of the headquarters, was an exceptionally talented person with political
savvy and understanding. He'd been there for years. We had a lot of meetings trying to figure
out ways to make it happen.
General Joulwan would work on the Lnder. We would think we'd have an opening, then it
would go away. We were enjoined by a court order, and this was a local, Wiesbaden-level
court. So when we brought up the complexity of federal, state, and local, here we had a local
court had kept us away; and the state government was abiding by that.
I would keep saying to Korte and Shaefgen, "Well, tell us we can go. We'll go." It was really
disruptive. By this time, we'd finished putting the helicopters together and flown them to
Hanau so they'd be up and in an operational element near maintenance facilities. Hanau had
a nice runway at Fliegerhorst. We were going to put Apaches there one day, and at least they
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