Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
I responded, "Well, I don't know. It's not in my hands these days. I know that all the division
and Corps commanders around here say it's the only way to go."
With that, General Thurman made a visible wince and commented that everyone at the
conference had come up to tell him about the need for EForce.
Q:
Where did the major reservations lie about EForce? Was it manpower?
A:
Oh, it's hard for me to say. I don't know. It was always my frustration. I briefed General
Vuono on it initially in May of '85, just as he was leaving the Combined Arms Center, Fort
Leavenworth, to go be the Army DCSOPS.
It was the May before he was supposed to leave in June or July. It was a new initiative, and it
did all the things he had been challenging us commandants to do: looking forward, trying to
make the combined arms team more effective, emphasizing productivity of equipment over
people, slimming down, the combined arms team. I thought this was an opportunity for him
to pick it up and see it as one of his things.
I think the problem was that I hit him in the last couple of months of his tour at the
Combined Arms Center and he had no time to assimilate it, adopt it, and take it over.
Thereafter he was fairly lukewarm.
The next year, General RisCassi came in. He bought the concept and was supportive. I
briefed General Richardson, commanding general of TRADOC. He bought it and told me to
go brief General Vuono in DCSOPS. I remember that General Thurman was the Vice then.
General Vuono said, "Not the right time. General Wickham's leaving. You shouldn't hit him
with anything in the last months of his command. Wait."
So, we waited. General Richardson bought it and was very supportive. He was a tough man
to convince--I mean, you've really got to lay it all out. We did, and he bought the EForce
concept.
General Vuono wanted to wait at that particular moment. So, then he came back to
TRADOC and then challenged us to do certain things, which took some more time. By the
time we had it ready to go, then he was saying it was too late for General Wickham. Then he
graduated from TRADOC to replace Wickham as Chief of Staff.
So, I don't know--EForce just kept getting pushed aside. Other things had priority of their
focus. It was just difficult for me to understand. I briefed General Thurman, then the Vice
Chief of Staff of the Army, on it one other time--the initiative we were doing. It seemed to
answer all the things he and others were saying that we ought to be doing: bring the engineers
in closer to the combat Army, integrate engineers more into the combined arms team, train in
peace like you will fight in war. Well, we always put a Corps engineer battalion with the
heavy division in war, and they went to fight together, but they weren't ready to work
together.
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