577th Engineer Battalion

By Charles Hendricks Office of History, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 30 June 1987

As the United States Army grew rapidly in the months after the nation entered World War II, the War Department issued orders on 24 April 1942 for the organization of nine additional engineer units. Four of those units, including the 377th Engineer Battalion (Separate), the antecedent of today's 577th Engineer Battalion, were to consist of black enlisted personnel in an army that remained segregated on racial lines. Second Army activated the 377th on 15 July 1942 at Camp Pickett, a newly opened installation located near Blackstone in southside Virginia. The battalion's first commander was Lieutenant Colonel Henry G. Douglas, a 1927 West Point graduate, and its initial cadre of enlisted men came from the 383d Engineer Battalion (Separate), which had been activated just four months earlier.

The battalion trained at Camp Pickett until 1 April 1943, when it moved by rail to fort Knox, Kentucky, on orders from Lieutenant General Leslie McNair, commander of Army Ground Forces. There it was assigned to Armored Force, an organization which, under the command of Lieutenant General Jacob Devers, controlled the training of virtually all armored units in the United States. It remained with the armored command for only four months, however. On 2 August 1943, a day after its relief from that assignment, the battalion was reorganized and redesignated as the 377th Engineer General Service Regiment. battalion's commander at Fort Knox, Major Charles Flournoy, assumed initial command of the regiment. The engineer general service regiment, with a strength of 52 officers, 3 warrant officers, and 1,267 enlisted men, was only slightly larger than

the separate battalion's strength of 33 officers, 1 warrant officer, and 1,084 enlisted men, but the regiment's additional heavy equipment made the new organization much more Productive and efficient. The Corps of Engineers had in February 1943 called the engineer separate battalions "a relic of 1917" and had argued that their members, whether black or white, could Provide the trained machinery operators and other specialists required for general service regiments. The reorganization of the 377th was Part of a general phase-out of engineer separate battalions which followed this recommendation.

The 377th now quickly completed its stateside training at Fort Knox. On 14 October 1943 it received a new commander, Colonel Amos T. Akerman, a 1925 Military Academy graduate and Georgia native who would 'Lead the regiment until the end of the war. on November 1, the new commander gave the slightly overstrength unit an efficiency rating of excellent. The unit moved to Camp Shanks, New York, in mid-November, and on 23 November 1943 it sailed from New York for England aboard the Queen Elizabeth.

Upon its arrival in Great Britain at the end of November 1943, the 377th Engineer General Service Regiment went immediately to county Devon in southwestern England, where for four months it engaged in the construction of large camps for the American troops that would be debarking for France. Elements of the regiment were dispersed around Devon to permit them to work more conveniently on their assigned Projects. When this work ended in the spring, the regiment moved farther west to Chacewater Camp near Truro in Cornwall and there engaged in basic and specialist training. It was alerted at the end of April for movement to the continent.

The regiment moved to France in late July, landing on Utah Beach on the last day of the month. Its 1st Battalion helped construct a 20,000-man rest camp at Carteret and Barneville-surMer, on the west coast of the Cotentin Peninsula. about 20 miles south of Cherbourg. It also removed enemy mines from a five-mile

stretch of coast south af Carteret, suffering the loss of one killed and five wounded in the operation. The regiment moved south and east to near Le Mans in mid-August, where it received a quick initiation in railroad repair work. Its 2d Battalion assisted the 368th Engineer General Service Regiment in rehabilitating about 20 miles of double-track rail line from Le Mans northwest to Sille-le-Guillaume in an area held by Germans less than a week before. Following immediately behind the British and American forces that cleared the western Part of the Falaise pocket on 16-18 August, the regiment then rehabilitated the 20 miles of double-track rail line from Flers east to Ecouche. utilizing 1,000 German prisoners in this work.

The regiment and its prisoner-of-war laborers moved east of Paris at the beginning of September with enough railcars to transport its entire strength. Here it restored more than 100 miles of track between Laon, located some 65 miles northeast of Paris, and Conflans, situated 14 miles west of embattled Metz and 160 miles east of Paris. The work included clearing a 3,200-foot tunnel and constructing a single-track bridge across the Longeau River. This rail line, which passed through the French cities of Reims and Verdun, would become an important supply channel for General Patton's Third Army. After completing this task at the end of September, the regiment was assigned to guard and consolidate captured engineer equipment at many points in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

The 377th was reassigned in early November 1944 to the Continental Advance Section, the logistical organization that had supported Seventh Army's landing at Marseilles in mid-September and now had its headquarters at Dijon in Burgundy. The companies of the 377th began a number of construction Projects in midNovember in the region between Dijon and Nancy. They improved the 2,000-bed general hospitals at Mirecourt and Vittel and the 500-bed station hospital at Epinal, and they built three ordnance shops--an automotive shop at Langres, an armament repair shop at Gray, and an armament maintenance shop at Chaumont. The

facilities occupied in mid-October by the 21st General Hospital on an 864-acre estate at Mirecourt once owned by a marquis posed particular challenges. The hospital was installed in an unfinished neuropsychiatric hospital that the French government had begun in 1934. French workers had sabotaged the complicated water and steam heating system of the hospital's 23 buildings to prevent their use by the Germans, but the American engineers and hospital staff quickly put them back into operation in 1944. The hopsital was overcrowded in November 1944-january 1945, and as the engineers made each building habitable, it was filled with patients. The 377th erected an additional 50 prefabricated hospital ward buildings in January 1945, increasing the hospital's capacity to 4,000 patients.

The regiment remained in and near Lorraine until the Allied victory in Europe. On 25 February 1945 in was assigned, with other units in the area. to the Burgundy District, a new base section organization. The European theater Communications Zone headquarters removed that distc-ict, with the 377th under it, from the Continental Advance Section and placed it under the Oise Section on 21 March. Through these administrative changes, the regiment continued to develop the hospitals at Mirecourt and Vittel, but as it finished its other assignments several of its companies began operating quarries and maintaining roads in the upper Marne valley.

General Eisenhower's European theater headquarters in early June ordered the 377th Engineer General Service Regiment to prepare to move to the Southwest Pacific theater. The unit moved to the nearby assembly area at Camp Boston on 21 june and then to the staging area for the port of Marseilles at the end of August. By then, however, the Americans' use of atomic weapons had brought Japan to its knees, so the European theater command was able to retain the regiment. It shipped the regiment to Nurnberg, Germany, in mid-September. Working at several localities in northern Bavaria. the 377th rehabilitated an army general hospital in Nurnberg, began constructing new buildings

for a similar hospital in Bayreuth and roads at two ammunition dumps at Bamberg, and relocated 1,500 feet of pipeline in the Nurnberg area. It redeployed to France once more at the beginning of December and sailed from Antwerp on the Sedalia Victory on 20 December 1945. Arriving at Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 3 January 1946, the regiment was inactivated the same day at Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia.

The Army did not activate the 377th Engineer General Service Regiment during ghe Korean War. In February 1954, however, it redesignated the unit as the 577th Engineer Battalion and allotted it to the Regular Army, simultaneously disbanding the regiment's first battalion headquarters and its entire second battalion. The 577th Engineer Battalion was then activated on 25 August 1954 at Fort Benning, Georgia, as an engineer construction Battalion. It served there for the next 12 years, during which time it undertook so many construction projects at that installation that it coined for itself the slogan. "We Build Fort Benning." Noteworthy among its projects during these years were the construction or expansion of Fryar Field and Dekkar Air Strip and the Kelley BiLl and Todd Field Heliports, and the rehabilitation of Buckner Range. The battalion also worked on projects at Fort Jackson South Carolina, the Dahlonega Ranger Camp in Georgia, and Fort McClellan, Alabama.

During the period 1955-1963 the 577th was attached to the 151st Engineer Group at Fort Benning. Members of the battalion participated in October 1961 in combat readiness demonstrations for President John Kennedy at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for which the participants were congratulated by the president. During the same year the entire battalion received a course in ,i.controlling riots and civil disturbances, and in the autumn of, 1962, members of the 577th helped maintain order at the University of Mississippi as it admitted its first black student. Throughout this period, the battalion was often understrength, and it had particulair difficulty in obtaining enough construction machine operators, maintenance personnel, and electricians.

The battalion was first alerted for deployment to Southeast Asia in october 1965. With its personnel continually tapped for other units deploying to Vietnam, the 577th remained well understrength until January 1966, when 350 enlisted men joined the unit for basic and then advanced training. The unit conducted this training despite a substantial shortage of officers that persisted well into the spring. The bulk of the unit sailed from Oakland Army Terminal on 7 July 1966 and arrived at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam,at the end of that month. Even though the first U.S. Army engineer units in Vietnam had landed at Cam Rann Bay.just 13 months earlier,a substantial port and military base had already been established there. Assigned to the 45th construction at Dong Ba Thin, just west of the bay, where a military airfield had been built by Company C of the 65th Engineer Battalion and the 20th Engineer Battalion over the previous year. After filling a tidal swamp to an elevation of six feet, the 577th built barracks,sanitary and recreational facilities, mess halls, and administrative offices on concrete floor pads in three cantonment areas at Dong Ba Thin. During October 1966 Company D of the battalion built six two-story barracks for a replacement depot across the bay at Cam Ranh Bay.

Some elements of the battalion worked on assignments at some distance from Dong Ba Thin. In September and October 1966 Company B replaced the stringers and decking on a 725-foot bridge at Dien Khanh, west of Nha Trang, removing the M4T6 aluminum balk decking for tactical use elsewhere and increasing the bridge's capacity to 35 tons.Company C of the 577th went by plane & truck to Long Binh near Saigon immediately upon its arrival in Vietnam, and there it was attached to the 46th Engineer Battalion. On this detached service. the company supported the 46th's construction of a huge ammunition depot at Long Binh, and itself constructed housing primarily for women troops at Tan Son Nhut and Long Binh and built and maintained roads in the area. On 22 January 1967 the company moved by convoy and landing craft to My Tho in the Mekong Delta, where it built two Bailey bridges

to Don Tam, opening it to heavy traffic. The company then began construction at Don Tam of a 7,500-man base camp for a brigade of the 9th Infantry Division.

The 577th Engineer Battalion moved to Tuy Hoa, located some 100 miles up the coast from Dong Ba Thin, during 11-19 November 1966. Switching positions with the 14th Engineer Battalion, the 577th traveled uneventfully in four convoys of 60 to 100 vehicles each up coastal Highway 1, a route long dominated by the Viet Cong. Company D built a heliport for Chinook craft and a 400-bed evacuation hospital at Tuy Hoa and maintained the 17 miles of Highway I from that town to Port Lane on Vung Ro Bay- Company A operated an aggregate quarry and an asphalt Plant near Tuy Hoa. Company B meanwhile helped a Private contractor to install a Prefabricated DeLong Pier at Port Lane, moving some 30,000 cubic Yards of rock fill to construct a causeway to the Pier. The company drew some of this rock from a mile-long connecting road Chat it blasted out along a cliff overlookinq the bay to another section of the port that it would develop. After completing the causeway in late January l967, the company worked on other projects at Port Lane, including a 500-man cantonment, petroleum tanks and retail facilities. and 40,000 square Yards of rock hardstands for off-loading.

Soon after the 69th engineer Battalion arrived in Vietnam at the beginning of May 1967,the personnel and equipment of Company C of the 577th, then working at Dong Tam in the Delta, were transferred to Company B of the 69tn, The personnel and equipment that had arrived in Vietnam as Company B of the 69th were sent to Tuy Hoa, and on 24, May 1967 they were transferred into Company C of the 577th in that way the 577th was reunified. A month later Company C deployed to Dong Tre in the hills northwest of Tuy Hoa,where in July it built an airfield with an all-weather. 2,500-foot runway for C-123 cargo planes. The company also upgraded 7 miles of Route 2D from Dong Tre to Highway 1 north of Tuy Hoa. Meanwhile during May and June 1967, Company D built at Phu Hiep,on the coast just south of Tuy Hoa, a 3,500-foot runway and paralle.) taxiway together with a

hardstand parking apron. This Project involved grading the sand, mixing it with soil cement, sealing the mixture with an asphaltic coat, and laying M8A1 matting for the runway. The battalion completed a 66-pad heliport at Phu Hiep Army Airfield the following spring.

The fall and winter of 1967-1968 was a difficult Period for the 577th Engineer Battalion. Typhoon Freida struck the Tuy Hoa area with 125 mile-per-hour winds on 10 November 1967. It washed away 30 feet of the causeway leading out to the DeLong pier at the Phu Hiep airfield and destroyed two frame maintanance buildings used by the battalion. The unit installed a 45-foot, M-4 fixed span to keep the DeLong pier in operation. The enemy began its Tet offensive on 1 February 1968. The Viet Cong struck the perimeter of the Tuy Hoa cantonment three times by 6 March, wounding 11 members of the 1577th, but each time the battalion and supporting units repelled the attackers. After enemy artillery fire destroyed the main irrigation canal of the Hieu Xuong District, the 577th helped Vietnamese citizens to restore it.

Company C began on 13 March 1968 one of the battalion's most challenging projects in Vietnam, the construction of a 14-span, 840-foot steel stringer bridge where Highway 1 crossed the Ban Thach River. The new bridge would replace a French colonial. bridge that the Viet Cong had destroyed in 1966. The company began driving 18-inch steel piles on April 22, some to depths as great as 134 feet. It capped the piles of the 13th and final bent on October 20. The company precast 336 reinforc.ed concrete slabs for the bridge decking using it's own concrete batch plant.and by mid-November it had placed them atop the steel stringers. Major General David Parker, the U.S. Army, Vietnam, Engineer, joined the Phu Yen province chief to dedicate the bridge on 7 December 1968.

Meanwhile on 10 June 1968, Company B of the battalion began the Vung Ro Mountain section of Highway 1 upgrade. The company blasted over 70,000 cubic yards of earth from the mountain cut and placed 18,000 cubir~ yards of fill before the end of 1968,

improving a road that previously had been little more than a path in places. Company B also improved the access road to the Vung Ro mountain top signal station, widening and leveling a road with grades over 15 percent. After the enemy attacked the cantonment at Vung Ro Bay on 6 June 1968, the unit cleared a 1 1 0-yard-wide, 1.7-mile-long swath across the mountainous terrain bounding the camp and built six fighting bunkers and an observation tower. During the first three months of 1969, Company D cleared a 110� yard-wide strip of trees and brush along the 28-mile-long section of road up the Da Rang and Ba valleys from Tuy Hoa to Cung Son. This protected from enemy ambushes that had earlier been upgraded to 18-ton capacity by an engineer light equipment company attached to the 577th. Company D used several Rome plows, standard military tractors equipped with special tree� cutting blades, supplemented by 2,100 boxes of bangalore torpedoes employed on steep and rocky areas, to clear the 813 acres stripped in this project.

As these projects and the continuing development of the Phu Hiep Airfield reached completion, the battalion was gradually redeployed, by elementz, in the first half of 1969 to Don Duong and Duc Trong in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, near Dalat. Company D, however, returned to Oong Ba Thin in March 1969, and there its personnel and equipment were transferred into Company D of the 589th Engineer Battalion. The men who had previously served as Companv D, 589th Engineer Battalion, were already at Don Duong, and they then filled Company D of the 577th. Company B of the.. 5-17th, which completed I~he upgrading oil Highwav I from Tuy Hoa to Vung Ro Bay, was the last to leave Phu Yen Province. The battalion finished this project on 22 May 1969, having completed 19 miles of asphalt pavement through a mountain pass and long stretches of rice paddy, built five major steel stringer bridges, and repaired two other bridges that had been partially destroyed by enemy explosives. When Company B reached upland Tuyen Duc Province an 1 June, other elements of the 577th had begun the development of base camps at Don Duong and Duc Trong, but these were not completed until autumn.

In the highlands, the battalion was asigned the task of upgrading to standards set by the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, a total of 91 miles of Highways 11, 20, and 21A (later named Highway 21B) between Di Linh, Dalat, Don Duong, and Song Pha. It would concentrate its efforts on the Portions of those roads that formed part of a critical through route from Saigon to Cam Ranh Bay, bypassing Dalat. On Highway 11 Company D of the 577th built during May-July 1969 a 230-foot triple-single. Bailey bridge supported by two timber-crib Piers across the Da Nhim River at Don Duong. It also erected a 70-foot double-single Bailey bridge on Highway 20 near Di Linh to replace one that had failed under excessive loads. Progress on road improvement was generally slow, however, particularly after the monsoon rains arrived in September, bringing 23 inches of rain to Don Duong in that month. A 250-ton-per-hour Cedar Rapids crusher that Company A of the battalion set up in August 1969 operated only briefly that year, due to the collapse of the headwall and rain damage to the haul road from the quarry.

Once the rains had subsided and essential repairs had been made tO the roads and bridges in the area. the 577th directed its primary efforts to upgrading Highway 21B, a 16-mile cutoff road between Don Duong and Duc Trong, south of Dalat. Enemy activity continued in this.period. The Duc Trong base camp was hit by mortar fire twice in early November and again in April 1970, and on 18 January 1970 the enemy destroyed a disabled D-7E dozer that had to be left overnight at an insecure worksite. Nevertheless, work continued apace, with the laying of base course peaking in January 1970 and paving averaging a steady four miles a month on the road in February, March, and April. By April Highway 21B had advanced enough to allow Companies B and C of the 577th to begin to improve a portion of Highway 20, the major route from the Saigon area to Dalat. During this period Company D of the 577th worked on Highway 11 east of Don Duong, paving some 8 miles of rebuilt roadway.

Highway 21B ran through the Da Nhim valley, and the 577th had to construct new bridges over the many tributaries of the Da

Nhim. Companies B and C of the battalion focused on this work during the summer and autumn of 1970. Company D. aided by a substantial group of locally hired civilians, concentrated its efforts on the section of Highway 1 1 between Don Duong and Dong Pha, in which the road descended in a series of switchbacks down the rugged littoral of the Central Highlands toward Phan Rang. Its work included cutting and filling for improved headwalls and the installation of culverts for all the mountain streams. These streams could rise dramatically during the monsoon season. When the rains hit the highlands, the 577th moved its earthmoving equipment to Highway I on the coastal Plain south of Phan Rang, where the rains were less severe. There its equipment operators supported the road-building work of the 589th Engineer Battalion.

After the upgrading of Highway 21B was completed in February 1971, Companies B and C shifted their focus to improving the section of Hiqhway 20 southwest of Duc Trong at the western terminus of Highway 21B. The work on this route had to be limited, however, as the battalion's strength was graduallv cut and some of its equipment was transferred to the Vietnamese during the year as part of the American withdrawal of forces from Vietnam. The companies worked on three substantial new bridges on the road and rebuilt and paved six miles of roadway south of the junction with Highway 21B. In September 1971 the battalion turned over its work on Highway 20 to the 61st Engineer Battalion of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

Company D continued in 1971 it's work on the rugged stretch of Highway 11 between Don Duong and Song Pha, A roadway failure that had occurred near Duc Me during the previous fall monsoon required cutting 15 feet into the uphill bank and moving 200,000 cubic yards of earth. The company also strengthened switchbacks and widened them to at least 19.6 feet (6 meters) in width. By October 1971, South Vietnamese authorities had accepted 16 miles of improved roadway from the company. Together with the adjoining roadwork on Highway 11 done by the 589th Engineer Battalion, the product was a modern, paved highway from Phan Rang

on the coast to Don Duong in the Highlands. As the battalion's service in Vietnam drew to a close, Company B moved down Highway 20 from Duc Trong to Di Linh in August 1971 to support the highway construction efforts of the 815th Engineer Battalion. Tasked to do rough earthwork and subgrade, the company moved over 100,000 cubic yards of earth from cuts west of Di Linh, strongly impressing its new supervisors. It worked on this project until early December, when the 815th was also ordered to prepare for inactivation.

Company A of the 577th, which had for two years operated the rock crushers and asphalt plant at Don Duong, meanwhile dismantled the site and, in numerous convoys, carried the equipment to the coast for shipment to the United States. During the last three months of its service in Vietnam, the battalion headquarters oversaw the work of separate engineer companies at the Ban Me Thuot and Weigt-Davis work sites, the latter located 25 miles south of Pleiku, as the companies turned those facilities over to Vietnamese engineer units. With the reduction of its forces virtually complete, a color guard from the 577th brought the battalion's colors to Scnofleid Bar-racks, Hawaii, at the end of January 1972. The battalion was refilled in Hawaii, and it served as an engineer construction battalion at Schofield Barracks until 11 July 1972, when it was inactivated. Most recently, the battalion was activated on 30 September 1986 at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and assigned to the U.S. Army Traing Center Engineer.

During the course of it's service the 577th Engineer Battalion Participated in two campaigns in World War II and thirteen campaigns in Vietnam. The Army awarded two meritorious unit commendations to the battalion,the first for its service in the Cam Rahn Bay and Tuy Hoa areas from 2 august 1966 to 1 1 June 1967 and the second for work at Tuy Hoa and Vung Ro Bay from 12 June 1967 to 7 December 1968. Company C of the 577th, which had been attached to the 46th Engineer Battalion upon its arrival in Vietnam, was a corecipient of the meritorious unit commendation awarded to that battalion for work at Long Binh and

Dong Tam from May 1966 to April 1967. Finally, the battalion headquarters element was awarded a civil actions medal by the Republic of Vietnam for the service it Performed in that country between 3 May 1970 and 30 April 1971.

The "Iron Soldiers" of the 577th Engineer Battalion trace their lineage back to the 377th Engineer Battalion which the Army constituted and activated in 1942. In 1943, the Army reorganized and redesignated the unit as the 377th Engineer Regiment. The 377th Engineer Regiment served superbly in World War ll and eamed campaign streamers for its actions in Northern France and the Rhineland.

The regiment landed on Utah beach in July 1944. It removed enemy mines from five miles of coast south of Carteret, France. The regiment also helped construct a 20,000-man rest camp at Carleret and Bameville-sur-Mer, France, about 20 miles south of Cherbourg. It was instrumental to the quick repair and rehabilitation of about 20-miles of double-track rail line from Le Mas to Sille-le-Guilmaurne, France.

In the western section of the Falaise pocket, France, the regiment followed immediately behind the American and British forces clearing the arm Next, the regiment rehabilitated 20 more miles of vital double-track rail line from Fleres to east of Ecouche, France.

Using prisoners of war, the unit built a single-track bridge across France's Longeau River and cleared a 3,200 foot tunnel where the regiment restored more than 100 additional miles of vital rail line in France. The unit consolidated and guarded captured enemy engineer equipment at numerous points across France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. During the remainder of the conflict, the regiment built and expanded hospitals, operated quarries, and maintained roads in the European Theater. The unit returned to the United States in 1946 and was inactivated at Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia

In 1954, the Army redesignated the unit the 577th Engineer Battalion (Construction) and activated it at Fort Benning, Georgia. From 1954 through 1966 it constructed numerous facilities at Fort Benning and coined for itself the slogan "We Built Fort Benning". During this period the unit also constructed facilities at Fort Jackson, South Carolina; Dahlonega Ranger Camp, Georgia; and Fort McClellan, Alabama.

When the Soviet Union heighten cold war tensions in 1961 by closing the border between the eastern and western sections of Germany and erecting the Berlin Wall, members of the battalion deployed on combat readiness demonstrations for President Kennedy. A year later the battalion assisted the nation further the cause of civil rights by deploying soldiers to Mississippi to help maintain order at the University of Mississippi as the school admitted the first African American student.

The 577th Engineer Battalion landed at Cam Rahn Bay, Vietnam on 7 July 1966. In Vietnam it fought, as well as built and maintained numerous structures. Its construction accomplishments include a large number of bridges, roads, airfields, barracks, bunkers, ammunition depots, petroleum tanks, hard stands, and many other facilities.

The battalion's soldiers served with great valor and distinction in Vietnam earning the unit two Metitorious Unit Commendations and 13 campaign streamers. The Army awarded the first Meritorious Unit Commendation for the battalion's service in Cam Rahn Bay and Tuy Hoa areas from 2 August 1966 to I I June 1967. The battalion earned its second Meritorious Unit Commendation for its work from Tuy Hoa to Vung Ro Bay from June 1967 to December 1968. The battalion's 13 campaign participation credits from Vietnam include: Counteroffensive, Phase 11; Counteroffensive, Phase III; Tet Counteroffensive; Counteroffensive, Phase IV; Counteroffensive, Phase V; Counteroffensive, Phase VI; Tet 69/Counteroffensive; Summer-Fall 1969; Winter-Spring i970; Sanctuary Counteroffensive; Counteroffensive, Phase V11; Consolidation I; and Consolidation II.

The battalion redeployed from Vietnam in January 1972, and served at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii until it inactivated on July 11, 1972. The Army reactivated the 577th Engineer Battalion on 30 September 1986 at Fort Leonard Wood,Missouri, and assigned it to the U.S. Army Training Center, Engineer. Over the last nine years, the battalion has trained and supported the training of thousands of soldiers and leaders.

The unit currently consists of 648 soldiers and civilians with a headquarters and three line companies. It operates and maintains over 700 pieces of combat and construction engineer equipment.

Headquariers Company contains the battalion headquarters and staff and the Sapper Leader Course trainers. The Sapper Leader Course trainers run the demanding four-week Sapper Leader Course.

Alpha Company provides the organizational level maintenance support for the battalion's vast array of equipment. It also provides virtually all the formal maintenance instruction given at the U.S. Army Engineer Center to the Corps of Engineers' Officers, Warrant Officers, Noncommissioned Officers, and Junior Enlisted Soldiers.

Bravo Company currently provides the equipment and training for the vast majority of all the Engineer Center's formal construction training to include interior electrician (5 1 R), engineer technician (5 IT), crane operator (62F), quarry specialist (62G), concrete and asphalt equipment operator (62H), general equipment operator (62J), and heavy equipment operator (62E). 0

Charlie Company provides combat engineer equipment and training for the vast majority of the Engineer Center's formal combat engineer training (I 2B/I 2C).

Constituted 24 April 1942 in The Army of the United States as the 377th Engineer Battalion Activated 15 July 1942 at Camp Pickett, Virginia Reorganized and redesignated 2 with 1943 as the 377th Engineer General Service Regiment with two battalions

Inactivated 3 January 1946 at Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia Redesignated 25 February 1954 as the 577th Engineer Battalion and allotted to the Regular Army Activated 25 August 1954 at Fort Benning, Georgia Inactivated !1 July 1972 at Schofield 'Barracks, Hawaii Headquarters transferred 30 September 1986 to the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command and organized at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri

Rhineland Vietnam Counteroffensive, PhaseII Counteroffensive. Phase III Tet Counteroffensive Counteroffensive, Phase IV Counteroffensive, Phase V Counteroffensive, Phase VI Tet 69/Counteroffensive Summer.-Fall 1969 Winter-Spring 1970 Sanctuary Counteroffensive Counteroffensive, Phase VII Consolidation I Consolidation II DECORATIONS

C Company Allowed a 3rd Meritorious Unit Commendation (Army) Engineer Battalion 1966-1967

Headquarters Element Civil Actions Medal RVN attached to the 46th 3 May 1970 - 30 April 1971

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