During the previous twenty-five years the Army had sent the master sergeant to many different locations-from Fort Belvoir, just down the highway from the Pentagon, to Berlin, Ethiopia, and Korea. Along the way it had issued him many different uniforms. Now, as he stood in the muggy Vietnamese heat on yet another tour of duty far from his family, he took in stride new boots, bush hat, and jungle fatigues. He prided himself on being a dedicated professional; if Uncle Sam wanted him to test some new items of equipment before they became general issue, he was happy to oblige.

The roar of the road grader's engine pushed thoughts of clothing out of the NCO's mind. As he was always trying to tell the young soldiers assigned to his work details, operating heavy equipment was serious business, and failure to concentrate could get people hurt. Especially in Vietnam. A war was going

on-not like World War II, his first experience in combat, nor even like the Korean "police action"-but a real war nonetheless. Although the field manuals said that construction engineers were supposed to do their jobs well behind the front lines, in Vietnam no one knew where those lines might be at any given time. No American could distinguish Viet Cong guerrillas from the local farmers or predict where the enemy would strike next.

The sergeant realized that one of the reasons why "the brass" had sent his engineer unit to Southeast Asia to turn an ancient path into a road had to do with that very problemseparating the farmers from the enemy. How could the poor village people be convinced that freedom rather than communism would make their lives easier? If the Army could prove to the peasants that Americans were here to help them, then the Communists might be beaten yet. The sergeant aimed to make that happen.

Army engineers played a key role in supporting American foreign policy efforts after World War II. By the mid-1950s the United States and the Soviet Union had emerged as superpowers heading alliances. While limited conventional wars such as the Korean conflict still took place, the danger of mass destruction posed by thermonuclear weapons introduced a new kind of struggle-a Cold War fought with a spectrum of methods, including psychological warfare, to determine whose social and economic system would prevail. In large measure this change took the form of a contest between West and East for influence in the so-called Third World of poor, nonindustrialized countries.

As European countries, at times reluctantly, granted independence to their former colonial possessions, the United States offered assistance to the newly liberated peoples. Successive Presidents and Congresses tried to improve the quality of life and to secure protection for human rights in the emerging nations as a way to block the growth of Soviet influence. In Southeast Asia this process began in earnest after Viet Minh insurgents defeated French troops at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Resulting peace talks split Indochina into Communist North Vietnam, pro-Western South Vietnam, and neutralist Laos and Cambodia.

The Communists never intended that arrangement to

be more than a temporary pause. When they resumed their advance in 1956, they avoided the mistake that had been made in Korea. Instead of launching a conventional invasion, they relied on guerrilla warfare. The United States countered by offering the Saigon government diplomatic and economic aid, a policy that met with only limited success. Eventually, President John F. Kennedy concluded that the mounting Viet Cong threat had to be met by military assistance as well.

The Corps of Engineers is among the oldest branches of the Army and one of the first to place reliance on technically competent noncommissioned officers. The roots of NCO technical professionalism reach back to the three companies of sappers and miners formed during the Revolution. These early engineers demonstrated their worth at the siege of Yorktown, where NCOS took charge of the working parties that dug the trenches, built the batteries, and led the light infantry assault columns in the capture of British-held Redoubt 10. The Regular Army's first permanent combat engineer company came into being during the Mexican War, expanding to a battalion during the Civil War. By 1917 the engineers had become leaders in technological innovation, forming highly specialized units to meet the needs of modern warfare.

Engineers' work with civic action programs overseas dated back to the early years of the twentieth century in the Philippines. There they had refined their special skills while supervising the construction of everything from roads to barracks. They became crucial to the success of the Army in working with the local civilian population. Sixty years later, their assignments in South. Vietnam continued a well-established tradition. Most experienced engineer NCOs served during the early years as members of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). Their backgrounds in such specialties as construction, equipment maintenance, and terrain intelligence made them invaluable trainers for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Other engineers served with the Special Forces that President Kennedy had made the spearhead of his effort to win over the Vietnamese people. Among the Green Berets, engineer NCOS worked as demolition specialists with "A" detachments in the bush or as foremen constructing fortified camps in the most remote parts of the country. The Army also created civic action mobile training teams to assist the ARVN's rural pacification program. Some teams were dispatched from Okinawa with engineer sergeants trained in public utilities to create public works programs from scratch. Usually an officer was teamed with the NCO. While the officer concentrated on working with the Vietnamese bureaucracy, the NCO used his ingenuity and experience to "scrounge" vital equipment and supplies. From the Montagnard settle

ments of the Central Highlands to the steamy Mekong Delta, just as other NCOS had done in the Philippines more than a half-century earlier, these teams provided a variety of technical services such as obtaining drinkable water by digging or repairing wells.

In 1963 the Army formalized much of the experience it had gained through the creation of engineer control and advisory detachments (ECADs). These detachments began to augment Special Forces groups all around the world, with the ECAD based in Okinawa sending teams throughout the Far East. In Vietnam its engineers worked closely with other military and civilian advisers and the Green Berets in people-to-people projects. This small but talented detachment included a number of senior engineer NCOS ranging in rank from staff sergeant to sergeant major. Contact teams systematically eliminated a water supply crisis that had developed in both South Vietnam and Thailand, setting up installations and teaching military and public works employees how to operate and maintain equipment. Later, ECAD personnel also participated in flood relief operations to alleviate the suffering caused by a typhoon.

However, initial American support for the South Vietnamese government was more than matched by the Communist regimes that backed the Viet Cong as North Vietnamese regular regiments moved into South Vietnam. In early 1965 President Lyndon Johnson and other national leaders reluctantly decided to commit major U.S. forces. Engineer units and NCOS became some of the first Army elements to deploy to Southeast Asia as part of the new commitment. Their technical skills, honed through years of on-the-job training, were essential ingredients for the massive construction program required to create base complexes, port facilities, airfields, and road networks needed to support the arriving divisions and brigades. Combat engineers, with experienced sergeants occupying leadership positions as firstline supervisors, extended the American reach out into the countryside, while mobile forces started search and destroy missions to bring the enemy to bay.

In March the ECAD in Okinawa dispatched reinforcements to the small contingent of engineers already in South Vietnam supporting American advisers. They provided the know-how to supervise U.S. and Vietnamese contractors at the first eleven sites selected for development. Designs developed at this time for everything from tropical billets and mess halls to bunkers and helicopter pads became standard for the rest of the war. In June the first major engineer unit-the 864th Engineer Construction Battalion-arrived and began the dramatic transformation of Cam Ranh Bay, a sparsely settled natural harbor, into one of the most elaborate logistical bases in the world. (The battalion commander later credited his senior NCOs with getting the program

off the ground.)

The Engineer Command in Vietnam reached a peak strength of 33,000 men in 1969. They served in 2 brigades, 6 groups, 28 combat and construction battalions, and 40 separate companies. Several thousand more engineers served with the engineer battalions assigned to the divisions and other tactical units (brigades and armored cavalry regiment) and the logistical command. The commitment of major U.S. forces had paid dividends, forcing the Viet Cong remnants and their regular

North Vietnamese Army allies to abandon conventional operations, withdraw to sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia, and revert to small unit guerrilla action. At that point, under the American government's policy of Vietnamization, U.S. forces began to withdraw, and the ARVN, now trained and equipped, gradually took over the main fighting effort. To help prepare for that transition, the engineers embarked on a massive road restoration program. In this, as in the preceding phase, engineer NCOs at every level played key roles.

Bulldozers and their operators literally changed the face of South Vietnam. Many engineer NCOs began their Army careers as 'dozer operators or soon became intimately acquainted with their proper use. In Vietnam this exprience enabled sergeants to receive instructions. from officers and translate them into action. It also made the NCOS alert to the vital though unglamorous job of maintaining equipment, a duty that had to be constantly stressed to the younger troops and one that taxed the NCOS' leadership skills.

The addition of a special blade and protective cab turned the standard D7 'dozer into a "Rome Plow," a vital tactical weapon. Escorted by armored cavalry or infantry, Rome Plows (eventually organized into special land-clearing units) cut swaths through selected enemyheld areas of South Vietnam, denying the guerrillas the use of formerly secure base areas hidden from aerial observation. Operators had to be trained to run and maintain the machines, and keeping them on their toes was "sergeants' business."

NCO leadership was also at the forefront in the divisional and nondivisional combat engineer battalions. These units swept roads of mines, carved out temporary patrol and fire support bases in remote areas, and, when time allowed, took care of grass-roots civic action projects. Such assignments drew the engineers into situations that stressed the "combat" in their designation. The fire support bases turned out to be especially vulnerable, for the enemy preferred to attack them, rather than larger and more formidable installations. Frequently, engineers working in such locations—often a small work party under NCOs-had to drop their equipment and grab rifles to repel enemy assaults.

Although the most familiar images of engineers in Vietnam involve scenes of construction and heavy equipment, their secondary role as infantry became more pronounced during the closing years of the war. Line units tended to be the first withdrawn from Vietnam;

engineers remained behind to work on a massive highway-rebuilding program. Engineer soldiers provided their own security, as technically expert NCOs moved to lead traditional combat squads and platoons. Locating and destroying bunker and tunnel complexes or setting up ambushes was tough, rugged duty, but it demonstrated once again the fundamental versatility of the career sergeants.

Among the engineer NCOs' last assignments in Vietnam was preparing the ARVN for the task of protecting its country without outside assistance. For the engineers this task involved establishing and conducting an on-the-job equipment training program, dubbed Project Buddy. As in earlier advisory efforts, the veteran engineer NCO emerged as a key player, this time as a teacher.

The technically oriented branches played a critical role during the decade-long involvement of the U.S. Army in Southeast Asia. Nine of every ten soldiers deployed to that theater served in supporting roles rather than in the basic combat arms. Signalmen, medics, truck drivers, and clerks matched the engineers in contributing vital skills required to sustain a modern army and assist an ally in its struggle to survive as a nation. They also suffered tropical heat and humidity and faced tropical diseases such as malaria to carry out the civic action program. By and large their activities attracted little public attention and gained no glory. Their efforts were not always recognized or appreciated by the riflemen, even though many support troops also did field service and came under attack in a war in which there was no front or rear area. Thus, the Vietnam experience challenged the NCO corps' technical and leadership skills to the fullest extent.

Decades of increasing dependence upon technology

to win wars and to prevent needless loss of life had created a Vietnam-era Army in which a professional soldier advanced mainly by adding to his skills as a specialist. Engineer promotions came to the noncommissioned officer who mastered a specific occupation: erecting buildings and bridges, making roads, turning jungles into airfields, surveying, or even diving. In paddies and isolated hilltop bases the NCO corps, entangled in a formless, unconventional war, confronted the fact that leadership was still a basic part of wearing stripes. From section chief or squad leader through

platoon sergeant to first sergeant and sergeant major, each NCO relearned that essential point.

Today's Army has been shaped by a conscious effort to examine the meaning of Vietnam-of what went right and what went wrong there. The renewed emphasis on the NCO corps is a product of that reexamination and analysis. In both active and reserve components, formal training programs have dramatically expanded to improve professionalism, while constantly stressing basic troop-leading skills.