IX Engineer Command

Footnote To Victory

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When the end of the war in Europe came, aviation engineer units of the IX Engineer Command could pause only briefly for celebration or review. There was still a big job to be accomplished and already their efforts were directed toward that end.

The units were scattered all over the continent, from Paris to Bremen, Pilsen, the Austrian border, and south to Marseilles. They had come a long way and their trusty bulldozers were still puffing. Statistically-minded engineers will probably be coming out with a maze of facts and figures covering their operations in the U.K., France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the Austrian border. Until they do, the achievements noted in this booklet will stand on their own.

But even without the benefit of figures it is not difficult to understand why the aviation engineers have been accepted as an integral and necessary part of the air force-ground force team. And now, more than ever before, that fact stands out. The redeployment of air power points up the vital role played by aviation engineers in air warfare:

(1) the application of the air power that helped to beat Germany was directly dependent on the bases constructed by the engineers.

(2) movement of these air units to occupational air force and Pacific bases hinges on the construction effort of aviation engineer troops.

Just as they have laid the ground work for victory in Europe, they are being called upon to secure the future peace here, as well as the victory in the Pacific by additional groundwork. The first part of this new groundwork is already started. With the exception of detachments working on advanced S and E strips, all units in Germany of the IX Engineer Command were on occupational air force construction jobs when V-E came. Units had already developed most of those fields tactically, that is for their war mission, and were already proceeding along the line of permanent development. This was in accordance with staff planning which had taken place long before the war’s end.

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In reviewing their part in the campaign, aviation engineers may well be proud of their record. They have pioneered a new field in the combined operations of a new type of warfare. Their work has proven the effectiveness of speed, mobility, and efficiency in the field of mass construction methods.

Any appraisal of their successful completion of their mission would have to include the men and services that made it possible for the aviation engineers to live and work. In this category would go the so-called “forgotten men”, the men who were behind the scenes --- those who supplied, those who rendered technical and administrative services, those who provided morale and spiritual assistance --- all those, and others who are a part of the command and without whom the organization could not have functioned. Included among these were the 902nd Engineer Air Force Headquarters Company; the 395th Signal Aviation Company; the 1294th Military Police Company; the 1052nd Quartermaster Company’s Detachment A; the 126 and 160 Army Postal Units; the 319th Station Complement Squadron; the First Platoon of the 32nd Special Service Company; the 8th, 43rd, 68th, 76th, 82nd, and 86th Ordnance Bomb Disposal Squads; the 1193rd Engineer Base Depot; the 752nd Engineer Parts Supply Company’s Detachment A; the 208, 209, 215, 218, and 220 Medical Dispensaries (Aviation); and the American Red Cross.