These are some personal notes that describe some of my memories and opinions of the organizations that I served with in an Army career that spanned nearly 30 years. If you find this site by accident through a search engine you are welcome to contact me and share your thoughts. Thanks. My e-mail address is BradenClan@ gmail.com.

The 130th Engineer Brigade was perhaps one of the most satisfying assignments of my career. There were a number of factors that contributed to this. Some of them were the actions of the previous Brigade Commander; my ability to interact with and hopefully influence the careers of numerous engineer company commanders and staff officers; our partnership activities with the Pionier Kommando 3 (PK3), the Corps engineer brigade for III (German) Corps to our north; the autonomy we had with our higher headquarters to train up the brigade; and the resources allocated to get the job done right.

First a brief overview on organization. The Seventh Army in Europe had two corps, VII Corps in the south and V Corps in the North. V Corps had two divisions, the 3rd Armored and the 8th Infantry (Mechanized). It also had the 7th Armored Cavalry Regiment, a corps artillery organization, a corps signal brigade, a corps military police brigade, a corps military intelligence brigade, a corps aviation brigade, and a corps engineer brigade.

The 130th Engineer Brigade, the V Corps Engineer Brigade, was previously commanded by Boyd Jones. In my opinion, Boyd was one heck of a combat engineer. Plus he knew combined arms doctrine and practice better than most infantry, armor, and artillery officers; and that's supposed to be their expertise. Boyd felt that his brigade could not survive on the battlefield as a wheeled organization, with engineer squads traversing the countryside in dump trucks. Corps engineers, like their divisional counterparts, needed to be mechanized, so that engineer squads would be in armored personnel carriers. Boyd made this a main focus of his command time, and he was successful, but he must have ruffled a few feathers in the process, though I don't think he cared because he was acting on principle. (And he was also hard-nosed and proud of it.) I learned that his parting Readiness Report comments were something like, "This brigade remains combat ineffective as it is not yet mechanized" in my first corps-level monthly meeting with all brigade commanders present, and the V Corps Commander, Colin Powell, asked me if I agreed with the statement. Gosh, I wish Boyd had given me a heads up on that one. I replied that I certainly agreed with Boyd and earned a raised eyebrow. But because Boyd had "thrown his body on the wire" over that issue, within six months we were mechanized and much, much the better for it in many ways. We were now survivable on the battlefield, and our credibility went up with the divisions and armored cavalry regiment we supported because we looked like them. (Our maintenance posture also improved greatly as we were able to switch out most of the old 5-ton dump trucks that occupied too much of our mechanics' time.)

In Hanau I actually wore three hats. In addition to being the Brigade Commander, I was also the Corps Engineer and a sub-Community commander of the Hanau Military Community. For the Corps Engineer job there was a Corps Engineer Section, headed by the very competent Lieutenant Colonel Tom MacIver, the Assistant Corps Engineer (ACE). In retrospect, I spent not much time with the Corps engineer duties, leaving them to Tom his staff. The Hanau Sub-Community had something like 1100 sets of quarters, the PX, two schools, and assorted troop units under the command of other organizations. Suddenly I had a much better perspective of what had tied up Jim Velezis with the 7th Engineer Brigade. I was supposed to maintain good order and discipline, especially among the military dependents who did not come under the Status of Forces Agreement that defined the relationship between military personnel and the German civil authorities. The problem was not the dependent caught speeding through downtown Hanau, the Germans could take care of that. The problem was dependents who wrote bad checks at the commissary, shop lifted at the PX, had fights in the stairwells of their housing, skipped school, performed other acts of misconduct within the American military community. These were things I was expected to take care of, and I did. More on that later.

But despite these other tasks, I viewed my primary duty as building a technically competent, tactically proficient force of combat engineers who could support the maneuver commanders on the battlefield. This task is actually performed at the company level and is reinforced at battalion level. Since engineers operate at these levels, the best the brigade can do is to provide the oversight and evaluations necessary for the feedback to see that the training is being done right. So we had a very good program of battalion field evaluations, called ARTEPs, and we also had a good brigade inspection plan. Our battalion evaluations were major field exercises, very rigorous, with lots of resources brought to play to increase the realism. I had some very good experience from the 317th Engineer Battalion as being on the receiving end of 130th Brigade ARTEPs; now I was delivering; and we developed and executed some great (tough) evaluations that really put battalions through the ringer. The way we did it was to have each battalion develop a simulated war plan against a training scenario, with obstacles for each squad to install. So at the start of each evaluation, we just began by having the battalion deploy to its training sector and begin installing its training obstacle plan. To ensure realism, we would create a massive supply dump in the area consisting of barbed wire, pickets, training mines, steel hedgehogs, and training demolitions. The squads would have to convoy to sector, pick up their materials and install them. In the latter part of each exercise, we would have squads go back and recover the materials that were installed, but we always missed some, so we would read about German civilians finding our training mines and wondering what to do with them.

Sometime after I had been selected for 06 level command, and before I actually took over the 130th Engineer Brigade, I visited the headquarters for a brief visit to say hello. It was a nice visit. I was introduced to many of the key players in the brigade staff, and also met the brigade secretary, a Department of the Army Civilian, whose position was authorized, probably because of the additional duties I would assume. I don't recall her name, but let's say her name was Mrs. Williamson. I was told that Mrs. Williamson was the most wonderful executive secretary that one could ever want, and that she probably had enough talent to command the brigade. That surely left me with a good feeling. However, when I assumed command of the brigade, I learned that Mrs. Williamson was an Army dependent, and she and her husband had recently rotated back to the United States. My new secretary was Cindy and she had good typing and filing skills and did a great job maintaining my calendar but – overall – she was pretty inexperienced. More on Cindy later.

Not too long into my time with the 130th, Colin Powell was called on to bigger things. Like his other major troop commanders, I was invited to write some suggested words for his end-of-tour report. Essentially what I submitted said that while the addition of APCs had done much to ensure the survivability of engineers on the battlefield, the engineer force was broken in terms of key tasks such as in creating and breaching minefields, and performing significant mobility operations. I got feedback on my initiative, as in, "What do you think you are doing in suggesting those words for LTG Powell's report?" My, wouldn't Boyd Jones have been proud of me? Interestingly - and this was classified at the time but I doubt it is now - during the first Gulf War we had to borrow mine plows from the Israelis because we didn't have such equipment. At that time Powell was Chief of Staff of the Army. I wonder if he remembered the words he rejected from me? Probably not.

I also got to fix - at least for my time with the brigade - a practice that I didn't like. It had to do with how engineers would do certain tasks. For example, the first thing engineers would do when assembling a Baily Bridge or an M4T6 dry span would be to stack arms. Not during my tenure. "Engineers carry their weapons at all times!" Sling your rifle over your back when you need two hands for lifting. I was asked if carrying the weapons would bang them up and cause maintenance problems. "That's why we have unit armorers." One of my better decisions, IMHO.

Hanau was where we had our first decent set of quarters, a regular home; not a stairwell, not a duplex. It was great. The Campo Pond Training Area was almost out our back door, and many of my days began or ended walking to or from a helicopter that picked me up or dropped me off there. As with the situation in Stuttgart, I was the most "frequent flyer" of the corps aviation unit that supported us, trying to spend time with the brigade's units. My daily schedule was listed on an index card, and it was most often very full. For times when I would travel using the brigade's VW minibus, I would often be accompanied by staff members who would use the time to talk when we couldn't otherwise find a meeting time in the schedule. Keeping up a "tradition" that I had picked up years back, I wrote using a purple pen. I'm told that my notes to staff members, in the distinctive purple ink, were always attention getters.

We did battalion inspections. These included inspections of vehicles and equipment. Company commanders complained about the inspections; they said it just proved that the brigade's CW4 inspectors were better than their CW2 Maintenance Officers, which was why the CW4s were CW4s. "Pulling our vehicles over a pit and writing us up for loose battery cables isn't a measure of our readiness, because during alerts we manage to get all our equipment into sector - the true indicator of readiness." Okay, so we changed the inspection to give each company a 50 kilometer night road march that went out and then circled back into a local bivouac area. We inspected the equipment there in the field the next morning. Same faults as when we were pulling the equipment over a pit. No more arguments, however.

As I said, my secretary was Cindy. If I asked Cindy to do something, she would do it until I would tell her to stop. I told her that I wanted to see my battalion commanders once each month at my headquarters for a formal counseling session. She did it. So There would come times when I looked at my schedule and saw one of the commanders coming in for his formal counseling session. In the Army, and probably other places as well, a counseling session has a negative orientation, so the commanders probably wondered what was up. I used a counseling form, same as the form Army sergeants use to write up counseling sessions with their soldiers, and the fact is that sergeant-to-soldier counseling sessions usually occurred when a soldier messed up and the intent was to make a formal record of the "mess up." In preparation for the session I would set aside some time to reflect on the individual coming in, trying to recall strengths as well as any weaknesses. When the battalion commander arrived, the first thing I said after some introductory chatting was that I would give him three wishes. I said he could wish for world peace, or for a million dollars, but that wishing for something I could deliver might be more productive. It took a session or so for this to catch on, but soon the battalion commanders were working hard on their wish lists. It turned out that many of the things they asked for were things I could provide, so we always started off on a good footing. And then we had some serious, and productive, discussions. A few of the commanders told me that these counseling sessions were the best they had ever experienced in their military career.

As a Brigade Commander I got invited to a number of military and social events such as changes of command and military balls. Bonnie had a pin collection from the many units in V Corps that she had on a piece of flannel and would wear to these functions - always a discussion maker. Bonnie also made Hermies. These were wooden ducks on wheels that she would push with a stick. Hermies were also a topic of interest at formal affairs. Hermie always had a 130th Engineer Brigade Pin. Bonnie would push Hermie under the dresses of the ladies and then express surprise and anger at what a rascal he was.

A First Sergeant in the Army is the senior enlisted person of a company and, among other very responsible duties, pretty much runs the housekeeping aspects of his unit. This includes the appearance of the barracks, the motor pool and the grounds. One challenge in these areas can be keeping the grass nice, and ensuring there are no bare spots. I found that my engineer first sergeants on Pioneer Kaserne in Hanau had fixed the problem: they simply put up a four strand barbed wire fence around the area they wanted the grass to grow and then filled the area inside the fence with grass seed and rolls of barbed tape concertina. When the grass grew up about 15 inches in the concertina, they removed all the wire and pickets and then mowed the area. Nice technique!

It's hard to be selected for battalion command unless one's record is very good and has the requisite checkmarks. One of those checkmarks is serving as a battalion executive office or operations officer. Another checkmark is being selected for and attending a staff college, like the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. A result of these factors was that each spring majors would be graduating from CGSC needing their time in battalions. Many of these were senior majors and concerned about the impact of being promoted to lieutenant colonel based on their past record, but not being selected for battalion command because they had not served in a battalion as a major. I resisted taking these bright, capable majors and putting them right away into a battalion, because I felt strongly that it took some time to learn about soldiering in Europe and the systems used in the theater. Oh, we would gladly take CGSC majors, but they had to serve first in a staff assignment outside of a battalion. We "lost" some good talent to the other two brigades, but all-in-all I liked the philosophy and would do it again.

While on the subject of battalion command, I was pleased to have Tom MacIver to serve as the Assistant Corps Engineer at V Corps Headquarters in Franfurt and later serve as the Commander of the 54th Engineer Battalion in Wildflecken - where he excelled. I still maintain contact with Tom. The previous commander of the 54th - Mike Ellicott, was also super, and his relationship with the 11th Armored Cavaly Regiment was outstanding; and we still exchange Christmas cards. Also, Bill Graham from the 20th Engineer Battalion where he was XO, came to Europe to command the 547th Engineer Battalion in Darmstadt, and I still have contact with Bill.

Another aspect of company commander face time was during quarterly training briefs. This is where, among some other things, company commanders lay out their training plans to the brigade commander. Since the brigade commander is the senior rater of company commanders, there is a lot of importance to these sessions. Earlier, I addressed troop time as a major being almost a required element of being selected for battalion. Well, another key element is success as a company commander. Receive a poor report card: start looking for another career. Receive an average report: you better be good and get with troops as a major. Receive a glowing report: well, let's look at the numbers. Something like 70% of captains make major and something like 65% of majors make lieutenant colonel, and something like 65% of lieutenant colonels are selected for command. Hmmm. So from captain to battalion command it is 65% of 65% of 70% = 29.5% ... or in other words: three out of ten captains will be selected for battalion command. Hopefully, my battalion commanders were working to develop their company commanders. The brigade part was to conduct challenging, exciting, and evaluated training exercises that helped challenge and develop all brigade personnel, and brigade inspections did the same (though not so exciting, for sure). Company commanders also develop company training schedules and look for ways to grow the skills of company members. In that regard, one of the related things I did was to establish a series of about eight guidon streamers: NBC, supply, physical fitness, maintenance, communications. Standards were published and companies could earn a streamer for meeting the guidelines. I tried to make it clear that the guidon streamer program was not for companies to earn a bunch so that they could impress the brigade commander, but to provide clear goals that a company might want to achieve in one or more of the areas as a part of the company's overall training plan.

We also participated in the Annual Engineer Conference in Bertschesgarten. Bertschesgarten is a great place with lots of beautiful countryside and some historic places. It is also near some good skiing. In setting up one of the conferences they asked for my advice. They needed some words for the program. "What kind of words?" I asked. They explained that what would really happen is that everyone would go skiing during that time, so they wondered what to say. I said to put Ski Outing on the program and they did. Heck, we worked plenty hard and didn't have to justify a few hours off. The brigade itself also had two ski trips while we were there. Great times. It was there that I suggested to the head of the Engineer School at Fort Leonard Wood that engineers adopt an award system for coins to commemorate achievement of individual sappers and sapper leaders - something that is done today.

I was also the President of the Hanau Chapter of the Association of the United States Army. I am thankful for the other commanders in the community, who did not work for me, but willingly participated in our AUSA events. We did a lot of fun things under the AUSA banner, such as raft races using engineer pneumatic assault boats, a 4-wheeler bogging outing, and hosting a bikers convention - which is a story all in itself. We got to know some of the other commanders very well: We played tennis (sucked it up on the money and paid for indoor court time at a German facility for a three month stretch) with Tom and Cathy Johnson, and that was a highlight of each week. Joel and Nancy Denney were also two other great people. Good times.

As to misconduct of American dependents, I asked what Boyd Jones had done. Apparently he left most of the work to his deputy sub-community commander, with the guidance to write those involved with misconduct a stern warning letter. The second incident would be an even sterner letter, and the third offense would result in the dependent being sent home involuntarily. I decide to do more. Twice a week I elected to see the offenders. I saw everything, from five year old school truants to a 75-year-old lady who had shoplifted at the PX. Generally we had a discussion, with me doing most of the talking except to let the offender apologize for the wrong doing and to agree to accept community service. Before I did this, I asked Karen and Sandra if this was going to okay with them, and they said yes. And - sure enough - they found their school mates telling them during the day that they were about to see me that night. For juveniles the response from the parents was mostly the same, with many parents asking to see me privately after the session to tell me thanks for dealing with their youth and that I said the same things that they had been telling their son or daughter. I also conducted regular Town Hall meetings to address community issues. We brought in representatives from the schools, the Facility Engineers, the military police, and the Post Exchange to listen to and respond to questions and issues. My secretary attended and she took notes and published them. We fixed things whenever possible. One of my first questions at every meeting was something like, "Has everyone had a chance to review the notes from our last meeting and is there any issue that was addressed that is not in the notes?" One of the chief "complainers" each meeting was Bonnie, who held me to a high standard of community responsiveness, and the people liked to see her let me have it. I certainly did not mind, because I did want the best possible community.

Notwithstanding all my additional duties I did like to get out with each of the battalions. Since they were spread through the corps area I was a "frequent flyer" with the corps aviation unit, though sometimes I travelled using my VW van when the weather was iffy. I was out so much that there were many occasions when members of the S3 Section rode with me just to get the face time they needed on upcoming brigade operations. One time, while visiting the 54th Engineer Battalion at Wildflecken, I was joined by Oberst Seitz and some of his staff members to observe a battalion training exercise where a German squad from PK3 was participating as part of Partnership activities. While there, Oberst Seitz's very fine operations officer Tribukait took me aside and relayed a brief conversation he just had with one of the combat engineer soldiers participating in the field training. Tribukait said that he had pointed to me and asked the soldier if he knew who I was, and the soldier responded that, yes, that was Colonel Braden, the Brigade Commander, and he had just been at the battalion the previous week. (What? Did he think I commanded the brigade from my desk in Hanau?)

Yes, the brigade publications were "fixed," just as in Stuttgart. And the training ammunition system was properly executed, including the forecasting. These two short sentences do little justice to the amount of effort it took, and - in my opinion - the long, long term benefits that accrued from these fixes.

One of the really great parts of my time with the 130th was our partnership activities with PK3. Many of these activities involved the wives, so Bonnie and I saw parts of Germany and France that were just fantastic. One time we got a Rhine River tour, looking at the castles and other sites, from one of PK3's bridge boats, complete with tables and linen and wine. Oh, our German friends knew how to do things. Another visit was to the spectacular Mont St. Michel in France. At another time we traveled to Normandy and visited the Normandy battlefields while "camping" in a French farming chateau. Bonnie and I really liked Hans-Georg Seitz and his wife Hildegard, and we still communicate with them.

Awards. And I also worked hard to drive my philosophy of a liberal awards program throughout the brigade, not to cheapen any of the Army medals; but just to ensure commanders worked hard to recognize their soldiers. At this point I could award both the Army Achievement Medal (AAM) and its next higher award, the Army Commendation Medal (ARCOM). One day I got a letter from a former battalion staff officer whom I had never met. It said that he had a lieutenant who worked for him and who was recommended for an ARCOM but that the award was turned down by Boyd Jones. He asked me to please reconsider. Nice to have that former staff officer working to take care of his lieutenant, and the ARCOM certificate and order was ready that very day. The AAM is an award that is not authorized to be awarded to full colonels, so I checked on all my lieutenant colonels and most of my staff majors and found opportunities to recognize them for one of their many achievements. I also worked to submit Oberst Seitz for a Legion of Merit, which he was awarded.

The concept of unit coins (See my notes from the 20th Engineer Battalion) was well established in Europe. We had a nice brigade coin that I awarded to soldiers for a variety of reasons. Also, for each exercise we created a stick-on decal that was distributed for soldier use to commemorate the event. My concept was that the inside of each APC would have the stickers of the many exercises the squad had participated in, as a team building mechanism.

On one of the corps-level exercises, the Corps Commander flew around by helicopter to visit all his major commands. I was invited to join this flying entourage, so I left my jeep driver and gave him directions to meet me at the last stop along the visitation route. Well, we did the visits, and then it was time to pick up my ride. As I recall the last place was a division headquarters, so there was a large parking area in a nearby section of woods. There must have been 75-100 vehicles parked there, many with waiting drivers. I walked from one end of the area to the other; and then back again. Looking carefully because all Army jeeps looked alike. No driver. I walked the lot again. No driver. Hmmm. I went over to one of the waiting soldiers and asked if he had a map. He did. Figuring out where you are in a wooded area can be hard, but I found "our" grid coordinates. They were half a mile from where I had told my driver to meet me. It seemed that I had the original set of coordinates for the division headquarters and that the division had moved slightly before it set up. I asked for a brief ride and we went to map coordinates where I had told my driver to wait. There, alone in the woods, with nothing around him, was my driver, exactly where I had told him to be. It turned out that when he parked all alone in the woods he got understandably nervous and called in by radio to ask what he should do. He was asked, "Are you where you were told to be?" He said yes and they told him to wait. And eventually I got there. He was a good man.

I tried to spend time in the field with each of the company commanders in the brigade. I needed to, as their senior rater. My field soldier training was at a fairly high level, coming from battalion command at Fort Campbell, home of the 101st Airborne Division. If your unit couldn't dig in and get dirty with the infantry then your chances for success weren't too good. So I was pretty decent about field fortifications, camouflage, cover, and concealment. Also good on weapons placement, range cards, and other fieldcraft. One of the things I did was walk them through their field mess operation, to ensure they understood how to set it up and operate it, and not just hope their Mess Sergeant knew what he was doing. I would like to think that I was a good role model for them.

One of the events that the brigade sponsored and conducted was Sapper Stakes, a "best combat engineer squad" competition involving the engineer squads of the brigade, with a few other squads invited from units outside the brigade. The concept was for each squad to compete in each event, with the events being worth so many points each. The squad earning the most points was the winner. We set up events in placing a minefield, constructing a barbed taped concertina obstacle, breaching a wire obstacle with a Bangalore torpedo, clearing a path through a darkened and booby-trapped area, physical fitness, forced-march live-fire, and APC driving. In reviewing previous competitions of this sort, it became apparent that the best squad was usually the one that had the highest PT Test scores and the highest marksmanship score. The reason was that the scoring for the true combat engineer events such as placing a minefield or erecting a wire obstacle was just too broad: all the squads in the competition would score between 90 and 95 points out of a 100 so the event did little to distinguish good squads from great squads. Since this was similar for all combat engineer events, they ended up having almost no impact on the overall outcome. To fix this, I decided to break every combat engineer task into distinct tasks performed soldier-by-soldier. Every soldier in the squad was give a name: Banger, Blaster, Boomer, Blazer, Bomber, Builder, etc. And each had a series of distinct individual tasks that when done in conjunction with the other squad members, would result in a completed collective task. And now the scorers had a matrix of subtasks to credit with points, which they did, and which spread out the scores so we could really find the best combat engineer squad and not the squad that was the most fit and had the best marksmen. (As a note, to this day I think engineer squads should be organized and trained this way. For example, the Assistant Demolition Specialist Boomer would learn his matrix tasks for every squad mission and be cross-trained in one other task such as serving as the primary Demolition Specialist Blaster.) There is always a downside to best-something events, and that is when units stack things to win and when units give up other training to focus purely on the best-something event. We tried to discourage this, and did encourage subordinate competitions that would raise the skill levels across the organization. I liked Sapper Stakes a lot, and felt it was a well-executed, challenging event that helped build a better combat engineer force throughout V Corps. Going back to two of the particular Squad Test stations ... one was where squads had to clear booby traps at night. To simulate night we put up a large maintenance tent, about 30 feet across by 80 feet long, and sandbagged it in until it was very dark inside. Worked well. For another: breaching a wire obstacle with a bangalore torpedo, we used an inert torpedo with just a blasting cap on the end that the soldiers inserted into a bag of flour. When the blasting cap detonated it also blew up the flour dust: a nice big bang with almost no deadly shrapnel in the air.

Prior to my change of command, Gaston Rouse, commander of the 317th, told Bonnie and me to be standing in front of our quarters at 4 PM on a certain day. I was to be in my dress blues and Bonnie was to be dressed accordingly. We were there at the appointed time. And down the street, in dress blue uniforms comes the 317th officers and NCOs with the 3rd Armored Division Band! They picked us up at our quarters and we marched through the housing area with the band playing. We ended up at the Hanau Officers Club where they had a reception. I ask Gaston how he ever got the 3rd Armored Division band, and he said he told them this was my change of command ceremony, and that when they found out it wasn't he promised to paint their barracks or something to "pay" for their presence. At any rate it was a wonderful evening.

My Change of Command Ceremony was held at the nearby Campo Pond Training Area. My people making the preparations asked what was the inclement weather plan (as in rain, for example)? I said, "Plan to get wet." Heck, combat engineers have ponchos and are rough and ready troops; it would have been an insult to send most of them home so the ceremony could be held in a school gym. And rather than have the troops line up 30 minutes or so in advance of the ceremony on the parade field, we had them muster behind trees in the nearby woods. At five minutes before the ceremony they burst onto the field under the cover of smoke to their places. Neat. Brigade CSM Walker had somehow come up with a WWII half track and had it refurbished, so Russ Fuhrman and I reviewed the troops from that vehicle: Also neat! And since Hans-Georg Seitz and other German friends were there, I made some of my remarks in German. After all my years in Germany I should have spoken the language better; my excuse was that I was pretty busy with my military duties and most Germans spoke English and, in many cases French, so it was hard to practice. Yes, an excuse. But I wrote my own speech in German, and when I gave it to one of my Department of the Army civilians who was fluent in German and asked him how it was, he paused and then said it was good and that all Germans would know right away that I had written it as opposed to reading something I had written in English that was translated onto paper. So that's what I did.