Footnote to Victory

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