Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
asked. "We've done everything General Thurman, the TRADOC commander, said we
needed to do." We had all the spaces. We had most of the right grades.
We were going to have more operator types, but if we got it done in January, we could be
ready for the REFORGER FTX, which was to take place a year later. So, we had time to do
it, if we could get it going.
Time moved on. February went by. March went by. They said, well, they would allow us to
stuff in the documentation off-line once we got the rest of the approvals. General Saint was
really pushing and trying, and we were just getting stiff-armed, I think, by the commander of
TRADOC, the Chief of Staff, and the DCSOPS in the form of General Shoffner.
Then General Schroeder, trying to break the dam, had a briefing for General Thurman to try
to push the EForce organization for his approval so he could take it up to General Vuono so
he could give the final approval, so we could get the documentation and proceed with the 7th
Light Infantry Division type test.
General Thurman just blew the briefing apart. He evidently forgot his commitment and
tasking at the engineer commanders conference that we would have to go through the 7th
Light Infantry Division process. He said, "It's not ready. You haven't done your evaluation.
You haven't done your analysis." This seemed to me just to be a way of throwing EForce
out and stiff-arming us--USAREUR and engineers--because we were proceeding along the
path he had directed and because we had done those analysis things earlier that he said
needed to be done.
This test during REFORGER was the next essential step. We had a major commander,
General Saint in Europe, who was asking for it. General RisCassi, the Vice Chief, was
supportive in facilitating the process.
So, it came down to a great culminating point, with messages from Saint and Thurman, back
channels back and forth, and General Vuono decided that it would not be documented at that
time and we would not go forward with it. Then General Saint said, "Well, I'm going to test
it on my own, ad hoc." General Vuono, the Chief of Staff, said, "Fine, go ahead. TRADOC
will support your evaluation."
With that, our plans to fully do it with a documented organization went away, but we
proceeded to do it on our own. Within the Corps--and this was to be a V Corps versus VII
Corps REFORGER FTX--plans were made to reorganize into EForce configurations.
Commanders were designated and S3s for the engineer brigade headquarters and all of that.
The headquarters elements were designated, and which battalions were going to support
which brigades were designated, and REFORGER complements were tied in.
We asked the Engineer School to send over evaluators, and TRADOC sent over evaluators.
General Schroeder, by this time, had people come in to do various analyses, and he had then
recast EForce into the terms of the Engineer Restructure Initiative. Now, see, we're talking
about a January '90 REFORGER. By this time, I was back in Washington as Deputy Chief of
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