________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Q:
Well, an issue like this probably took up a good proportion of your time as Chief of Staff.
A:
Well, at that particular time this was a big issue. There were all kinds of different issues
always coming along. It was a very intense period of my career, I guess the most intense. I
was staying late at night, taking briefcases home at night and four briefcases on a weekend.
There were a lot of activities and interaction with the host nations.
Q:
Why don't we turn to some of those host nation issues?
A:
I think I really talked about them earlier. The Apache helicopters at Wiesbaden issue
continued. The noise issues continued. They were the prime items.
I would say that in March of '89 things took another change. There had been a study two
years before, actually before I arrived as DCSENGR, involving the ministries I've spoken of,
Defense and Finance. It also involved the USAREUR Chief of Staff and Major General Scott
Smith and other staffers from USAREUR, involving the use of our training areas and how
the various nations train.
The basic thing the Germans were asking was, "Why doesn't the American Army train like
the German Army?" We felt there were major differences and that we could not tolerate the
reduced level of training of the German Army, both the manner of training and the level of
proficiency. Also, our Army was deployed overseas and, having brought people over there,
we wanted to keep them occupied.
The German Army needed to knock off on a Friday afternoon so their soldiers could go home
because they had a home to go to. When our folks knocked off, they didn't have a home to go
home to, and so they could go down into the town. Yet, downtown were some of the
Germans who didn't want the Americans around. So, what kind of activities could one keep
our soldiers involved in over these off periods?
We really wanted a high level of training intensity. We needed to train the combined arms
team together, and that was our emphasis and not the German emphasis. We wanted to train
live fire, and we wanted to do a lot of those kinds of things.
So, we made the case, and it had been a dormant issue for over a year. But, in that March of
'89, we went up to a meeting where we were asked to come up and explain our need for live
firing at Grafenwhr.
Dr. Fischer, whom I mentioned before, really threw down the gauntlet. He basically said,
"You must begin training like the Bundeswehr. Nothing else will be satisfactory. If you don't
tell us in a week that you're willing to do that, then we will get your political masters to tell
you to do that."
This was a very different tone and sense of interaction than I'd ever experienced. I'd been
doing this for nearly two years with the Germans, and although we had some issues, I thought
they were supportive and they were trying to accommodate us.
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