Captain John Fallon of the 36th Combat Engineers WWII, sent this to me. This relates to the story I shared in the Engineer's forum earlier today.

John has been corresponding with Colonel Stevens for quite a while. The Colonel's letter is below. BTW, I sent an email to Colonel Stevens to let him know how I fit into the scheme of things.

I also sent forwarded this letter to my friend, Colonel Mike Morgan, of Army Engineer Magazine. See link regarding how this all relates:

http://208.56.11.96/Invision/index.php?showtopic=3011

Classification: Caveats: *NOTICE:

John, I am so proud of my new 36th Engineer Hat. It is proudly hanging in the office of the commander. I also appreciated the photo from the reunion. We will find a place of honor to display it in the HQ. Thank you for thinking of us.

Our webmaster, I'm told, is still in school...but I hope to have a website up and running soon. Will keep you informed. I've copied an excerpt below that basically explains the function of the Brigade HQ in Army speak. Suffice to say, we are HQ responsible for integrating various engineer capabilities in support of the warfighter from the operational to the tactical level.

The centerpiece of engineer battle command system is the Engineer Brigade HQ. The Engineer Brigade HQ has no fixed number or type of supporting Baseline Forces or Mission Module Forces. The primary role of the Engineer Brigade is to provide battle command to support engineer forces at the operational and theater level. Engineer Brigades may be deployed and employed with any mix of engineer forces from multiple continental United States (CONUS) or outside the continental United States (OCONUS) installations. Once deployed, the Engineer Brigades become the focal point for apportioning and allocating mission-tailored engineer forces to the BCTs, support brigades, and to other Services. The Engineer Brigade will accept additional forces and redeploy others as the COCOM's requirements change throughout an operation, and will have the ability to provide deployable engineer command posts and staff expertise to provide engineer-specific C2 when required. An Engineer Brigade will also be able to be assigned to a Division or Corps to serve as an ME Brigade (with staff augmentation) or when the scope of the mission requires a robust and focused engineer HQ.

Of note that your men may find interesting...the Rugged Seahorse patch has now made its first appearance in Afghanistan. Several members of our team here at Fort Hood recently returned from a short reconnaissance in order to start preparing the Brigade HQ to deploy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom sometime in the spring of 2007. We will be directly supporting the 82nd Airborne Division. And so, the Rugged Engineers will once again leave their mark in a foreign land serving to defend freedom. Hooah!

Take care and please do stay in touch. And of course, Stay Rugged!

All the best,

Rick Stevens

"Rugged 6"