85th/540th Bridge Photos

[Walt's Daughter]

From my buddy Art Cook, 36th Combat Engineer

 

Dear M

 

Here's a couple of items

 

1. in your assemblage the word Small Boat was used.

 

For an assault-river-crossing, the engineers provided the boats and (each boat could carry only a few men and their gear) so depending on the number of men needed for the asault, an attempt was made to have a boat and crew (two engineer soldiers) for every six to ten men of the assault force (depending on the weight of the combined men and equipment.

There usually was a number of these boats involved depending on the magnitude of the assault force and their mission.

 

After landing a wave of the assault force on the far side, the engineer crew returned the boats to the friendly shore to ferry more troops as needed

 

THe boats were aluminum, open style similar to those usually used for fishing, except somewhat more rugged - This assault operation was mighty dangerous and frequently resulted in heavy casualties.

 

In practice the assault was conducted with guarded sacrecy and artillery support when needed - attemptng to reduce risk.

 

2. Using these small boats the engineers could improvise a foot bridge to allow the troops to cross water obstacles on foot if possible.

 

With the foot bridge, an anchor line was established just upstream from where the line of boats would be located/ The small boats would be assembled with a treadway, one boat per ten feet of treadway and of sufficient number of boats and treadway to provide length needed for a floating pathway across the body of water being spanned.

From each boat there was attached a line which was fastened to the anchor line and this provided the alignment of the footbridge.

 

These footbridges were usually used to provide easy passage of troops across shallow water or swampy places

 

installing and maintaining the footbridge was a responsibility of the engineers.

 

More later

 

Yours A