Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
So, as long as the battalion was putting demands on the company, giving them information,
somebody had to stay in the orderly room and answer those demands. If we could make that
work through a company computer, then that would be better.
General Saint, providing direction to this, told me to find a company commander coming out
of command who knew something about this kind of business. He wanted company
commanders to develop a tool that helped them, and he didn't want other people to meddle
with that process, telling the company commander what he had to have. He really forbade
people from screwing with the people developing this product.
We found a company commander coming out of command, and he became the guy who was
told, "You go out and invent those software programs to do the jobs you need as a company
commander to make your job easier and to get the first sergeant out of the orderly room, not
keep him there."
General Saint didn't say, "You've got to have this, you've got to have that." He just said,
"Let the company commander do it, and don't anybody mess with him."
The next thing he did was to give, out of the USAREUR budget, each Corps a bunch of
money to buy the personal computers for the next budget year, so the seed money was there.
It wasn't enough to do the whole command, but it was to be seed money. The Corps were to
identify those units who should be the seeds of the project, and it was supposed to include
different kinds of units--not all armor, or infantry, but to have artillery, engineer,
quartermaster, ordnance as well, so we would seed the whole command, the idea being that
everybody will see it work and want one. Then they will go out and buy their own through
the system.
Then he talked to the commander of the 5th Signal, the communications staff officer for the
command, and said, "You get your organization ready so that we can procure and put in the
computer store the company computers necessary and reproduce and stock the software
packages necessary that are developed to do that."
So, our company commander project officer went out and developed some things for
personnel actions, for training, for logistics, whatever he felt would help him. General Watts'
VII Corps said, "I would like to get it for all of my company commanders. I will pay the
balance out of my budget." So, we got a bunch of folks oriented toward developing the
company commander's computer by a company commander and tried it out on other
company commanders. He was not messed with by the lieutenant colonels, colonels, and
generals, but it was resourced by the generals--the Commander in Chief--who made it
happen in a relatively short time.
Q:
So, did it turn out to be popular?
A:
Yes.
Q:
All the companies saw it and wanted one?
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