To say that the 20th Engineer Brigade OIF Lessons Learned Conference being held this week is/was a success would be an understatement. Hosted by the Fort Bragg Chapter of the Army Engineer Association, and Colonel "Duke" Deluca, commander of the brigade, around 200 Soldiers and civilians discussed various lessons learned, in a most candid and effective manner. I'm not going to go into all the details here, because I'm going to write an article for the Jan-Feb 2009 issue of Army Engineer Magazine in that regard. Suffice it to say that the main thing I carried away after listening to Colonel Deluca and others, is that many of the key lessons the brigade learned from their involvement in the counterinsurgency fight in Iraq, are almost exactly the same engineer lessons learned during our war in Vietnam. I'm not saying that, Colonel Deluca said it time and again. In fact, he quoted from historical publications written by Corps of Engineers leaders after the war in Southeast Asia. Why is it that high level leaders and managers in the Pentagon fail to go back and revisit things the military has done before? At least Colonel Duke Deluca does, and for that he is to be commended. In my view, the rest of the Engineer Regiment needs to heed what he is saying.
