Essayons!

The Army engineer's worst enemies in Viet Nam are sand, heat, rain and the Viet Cong--in that order. Sand sifts into the clutches, bearings and grease seals of vital construction equipment that is needed 20 hours a day, seven days a week. The days are so hot (sometimes reaching 125DEG) that concrete must be poured after dark. The muggy, rainy tropical climate silently, incessantly erodes everything from spanners to cranes. And there is the ever-present threat of Viet Cong snipers or a full-scale enemy attack.

No previous assignment in its history has taxed the Army's 70,000-man Corps of Engineers more heavily. For even more than the Pacific battles of World War II, the struggle for Viet Nam--as Douglas MacArthur said of the earlier conflict--is "an engineer's war." Despite Herculean construction feats by the corps, the U.S. buildup has of necessity outpaced the logistical facilities needed to handle it. On his return from Saigon last November, one of Defense Secretary McNamara's first orders to Pentagon aides was to find a chief engineer to supervise all military construction in South Viet Nam.

The man they found is Arkansas-born Brigadier General Carroll Dunn, 49, currently deputy chief of staff for the Eighth Army, who will arrive there next week. A professional engineer (University of Illinois, '38), he supervised construction of the first early-warning system in Greenland, the Titan II missile sites and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's vast new Houston headquarters. Dunn will now be McNamara's straw boss in charge of some $1 billion worth of work and 40,000 military and civilian engineers. It will be his toughest assignment yet.

"Look at It Now." Last week alone, the 10,000 men of the 18th Engineer Brigade were building a 10,000-ft. jet-fighter strip at Phan Rang, a floating dock that will double the capacity of the Qui Nhon harbor, a communications facility and a 60-bed hospital for the 1st Air Cavalry at An Khe, a 250,000-sq.-yd. ammunition dump at Long Binh, and fortifications and housing at Cu Chi for newly arrived troops of the 25th Division. In one recent seven-day period, the men of the 18th worked 161,923 man-hours, hauling 362,762 tons of fill, pouring 1,394 cu. yds. of concrete, finishing 504 lin. ft. of runway, erecting 474,460 sq. ft. of open and covered storage, crushing 4,806 tons of rock and building 3,840 sq. ft. of hospital wards.

By far the most spectacular U.S. engineering project of the war is Cam Ranh Bay, a 15-mile-long, five-mile-wide deep-water harbor 190 miles north of Saigon. Seven months ago it was a pristine, sun-blanched wasteland; today it is a frenetic modern port that rivals Charleston's in size. There, last week, building supplies, ammunition and barrels of fuel were stacked endlessly on the beaches near rows of new ware houses and barracks. On a flattened hilltop, antiaircraft Hawk missiles stood at the ready. Nearby, giant C-130 cargo planes and F-4 Phantom jet fighters returning from combat taxied down on a new 10,000-ft. runway. "When we landed last June," said Colonel William F. Hart of the 35th Engineers Group, "there was one pier here and that's about all. lust look at it now!"

Pride of Cam Ranh Bay is the new DeLong pier. Three hundred feet by 90 ft., it was towed from South Carolina, arrived Oct. 30, and was in use 45 days later. To anchor it, caissons were sunk 138 ft. into the bay's sandy bottom; an 850-ft.-long causeway from shore to pier was fashioned out of 27,500 cu. yds. of rock that had to be blasted out of a nearby hill. "It was the most spectacular and important project we've had to date," said Colonel Hart. It also was one of the most urgently needed: before the new pier was put in use, as many as 47 ships choked the bay waiting to unload; last week there were none.

"A Bridge Is a Bridge." To meet the demands of the war and the Corps of Engineers' own manpower shortage, an engineers' training regiment, inactive since Korea, has been reactivated at Fort Belvoir, Va. The first class of 60 men started training last month, will be joined by a new group every other week until the regiment reaches an operating strength of 1,200 men. Courses at Belvoir are specifically Viet Nam-oriented, with heavy stress on such skills as reinforced-concrete bridge design and construction, maintenance of equipment--not to mention combat and survival.

Also at Fort Belvoir, Army engineers are trying out the versatile Universal Engineer Tractor, which resembles a World War I tank, is mostly aluminum and weighs only 31,000 Ibs. The UET can be used as a bulldozer, grader, scraper, armored personnel carrier or general-purpose transport, has an over-the-road speed of better than 30 m.p.h. Some new items already in the engineers' toolbox: aluminum landing mats, plastic road surfaces (called "membranes"), and moisture-proof plastic maps that can be wadded up and tucked into a shirt pocket and still retain their original shape.

The unassuming motto of the Corps of Engineers is Essayons (Let's try)--an injunction they heeded with distinction in the tropics of the South Pacific and the frozen hills of Korea. Now they are learning to take the sands and swamps of South Viet Nam in stride. As an instructor at Fort Belvoir put it last week: "A bridge is a bridge wherever you build it. If you can build it one place, you can build it another."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.