◆ SpookStack

consideration which the others involved in ~he opera- tion -- particularly Thorsrud -- recognized, but failed to articulate so clearly. Beerli's comments do much to explain to the layman some of the critical problems that began to surface at TIDE even before the close of D-Day: This is something again that probably hasn't been emphasized. If we plan an attack on D-2 aad another on D-Day, you get everybody cranked up. You get the schedule and everything else going. So you go to D-2, when everything is going well, and then you've got everybody ready to go on the D-Day. They've all worked, they've all been rested, and then you cancel it. Then you start it again, but you get everybody out of cycle. There- fore, you've got yourself in a hole, because your maintenance people and everybody else are working up to a point, and then you delay it. Then you want to start again. Well, then you're wearing your people down. In other words, by the cancellation of that mission, you have compounded the problem back at the base on rest schedules, mess schedules, and everything else. You might be able to do it as an exception, but in the long run, if you are going to do· it for four or five days .•• again ... on again, off again •.. you know what that does. It is like any schedule that you would set up -- you start wearing people down and you get nothing to show for it. 135/ Subsequent to Gen. Cabell's death (25 May 1971), a 15 page hand written note surfaced among the General's - 288 -