Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
General Groves, and congressional staffs. The fact that we had, at that time, proposed
Vilseck be the first installation converted. It became, in reality, the only real installation
converted.
So, Vilseck construction was well under way. They were building housing areas and that sort
of thing at the time. Today, as we're drawing down in Europe, one of the brigade places
remaining is Vilseck.
Q:
To turn, for a minute, to another issue, the time when you were there is about the time, or
perhaps a little after the time, when the dollar started to decline--pretty rapidly, I think.
Currency fluctuations must have been a pretty major concern when dealing with a budgetary
situation.
A:
Yes, it was. It was certainly not down as far as it is now, but it was down from its high side,
which had gotten up to 3.2 to the dollar earlier, when I'd been over visiting from Belvoir. It
hovered between about 1.9 and 1.65, I think, while I was there.
We would always have to be worrying about that at the end of the budget year, having to get
a fix from the defense pot to balance things up. So, it always became a factor.
Another one of the big changes in quality of life by this time was that they added an
adjustable cost of living allowance and the housing allowance, which fluctuated with the
dollar much more rapidly.
Back in my earlier time, you'd have to go so long, and then they'd reset it. Now, the
allowance fluctuated as the dollar fluctuated. So, people who were renting on the economy
were not hurt so bad in that they had adjustments that could only lag a month, not six months
or a year.
Q:
You've mentioned the exercises, particularly the REFORGER exercises that were ongoing.
Would you like to talk some more about those, and the role of DCSENGR? Was it when you
were at DCSENGR, or perhaps later, that there was an attempt, at least, to do a try at E
Force during one of those exercises?
A:
Well, the saga of EForce certainly continued, and I remained very interested in trying to
make it all happen. I found that the people in Europe, General Otis, the Corps commanders--
General Woodmansee in V Corps, General Ron Watts in VII Corps--were all aggressively
for EForce.
Nevertheless, we still couldn't seem to get it out of TRADOC, as I mentioned. General
Thurman had taken over TRADOC, and General Reno's approach was to package it all up,
you know, a complete study, and spend some time on it.
Colonel Russ Fuhrman--now a brigadier general--was in Combat Developments and was
carrying the ball on EForce. General Reno talked about it when he came over for the annual
engineer conference. EForce and the REFORGER FTXs were linked considerably during
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