Doing the 'Difficult at Once'

摘要

In February 2002, I got a call from Lt. Gen. Michael Hagee, USMC, Commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), to request Seabee participation on a very small team being assembled to plan how to "take down Baghdad" should such action be directed by the Commander-in-Chief. The engineer effort would be a crucial part of any rapid U.S. Marine Corps drive though the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. To manage this effort, Gen. Hagee decided it was time to operationalize a concept he had been advancing to consolidate all engineers assigned to the Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) under a Seabee flag officer. His specific tasking was simply stated as "we need a MEG"—a MEF Engineer Group.