By Vaughn R. Larson
229th Engineer Company
PLATTEVILLE — Looking around Mound View Park in Platteville at a recent reunion of the Wisconsin Army National Guard’s 229th Engineer Company, former sergeant major and unit member Jeff Breuer realized the scope and scale of their community impact over the years.
“The incredible legacy of the Wisconsin Army National Guard engineer units who worked on so many community projects over several decades became clearly evident for me,” Breuer said. “Many Citizen Soldiers, me included, were the ‘boots on the ground’ or, in this case, up on the CAT bulldozer,” building parks, ramps and other community infrastructure.
The park that the reunion was held at was just one example of that legacy. Once upon a time, part of Mound View Park was the Homestead Zinc Mine that operated between 1908 and 1913. Today it is considered an attractive greenway for the city of Platteville and includes 15 campsites.
For many years, Wisconsin Army National Guard engineer units have taken part in what is now referred to as innovative readiness training, where units apply their skills and equipment to help a local project.
“It was perfect training for us engineers,” said Dave Molitor, a retired chief warrant officer 4 with the Wisconsin Army National Guard and a former state program manager for Wisconsin National Guard engineering projects, who joined the 229th Engineer Company’s Detachment 1 after he began attending the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.
Molitor explained that the process began with the community putting in a request. His office would get a sense of the project and help the organization plan it and send a request packet to the National Guard Bureau to justify using National Guard personnel and equipment for a community project.
Readiness is achieved by effective training. Infantry units can practice movement to contact without the need to fire weapons, and artillery units can practice occupying a firing point without actually firing cannons or rockets. But Army engineer units need to move dirt or build structures to stay proficient in their jobs. Bringing the unit to Fort McCoy to dig a hole and then fill it in over the course of a drill weekend was one way to stay proficient, but not necessarily a satisfactory way.
One of the conditions for the community projects was that “we couldn’t take work away from civilian contractors,” Molitor said. “It had to be advertised in the local newspapers for a couple of weeks — but, of course, no contractor is going to do it for free. All the community had to do for us was pay for our fuel and, if they could, pay for our food.”
Molitor said the unit would stay in tents on the construction site if needed, and projects often took several drill weekends to complete.
One project, the racetrack at the Grant County Fairgrounds, was supposed to be completed in a matter of weeks. But the Gulf War in 1991, floods and heavy rains in the following years, pushed the project back a few years. Still, local officials were pleased with the final results.
“This is going to be one of the finest race tracks in Wisconsin and Iowa,” said racetrack promoter Jerry Blue in a June 29, 1995 issue of the Grant County Herald Independent. “The National Guard should be commended — they did a fabulous job. Grant County should be proud of this speedway. This has the potential to be a super speedway.”
Lester Jantzen served for 21 years, including two years on active duty as a food inspector in the Army Veterinary Corps. He returned to the family farm in Potosi after his time in the Army, and after 10 years joined the 229th Engineer Company, where he was assigned to Detachment 1. He admitted he couldn’t recount all the community projects the 229th Engineer Company did over the years.
“We did I don’t know how many athletic fields — Viroqua, Seneca,” Jantzen said. “I was part of the Adams Friendship airport project. Of course, I don’t know how many projects we did on Fort McCoy or Camp Ripley,” Minnesota.
During his time in the Wisconsin Army National Guard, Jantzen deployed with the 229th to Desert Storm as a platoon sergeant, where the unit repaired Tapline Road, a major highway in Saudi Arabia, as well as laying pipeline — sometimes up to five miles per day. He was also activated as part of the National Guard response to the Barneveld tornado in 1984, for flood response in Prairie du Chien and to Waupun during the prison guard strike in 1977.
The most memorable community project for Jantzen was the Camden handicapped park in Janesville.
“We did all the earthwork for the handicapped playground,” he said. “I took a lot of pride in that one because of what it was and what it was for.”
Brent Bowers, executive director of Wisconsin Camp Badger — a summer camp for adults and children with developmental challenges in northern Grant County — was one of the few non-engineers at the reunion.
“Without the 229th, Camp Badger wouldn’t be what it is today,” Bowers said. “We’re kind of like a resort, but we’re trained to handle a certain set of needs.”
The 229th built the road to the camp’s main campus between 1969-1973, Bowers said, and over the years have continued doing projects at the camp.
“They brought their cranes in, helping set the trusses,” Bowers said. “They’ve done a lot of projects for us — an athletic field, culverts, places where we’re having erosion problems, putting in rock roads.”
Mark Rodwell, a retired lieutenant colonel, enlisted in the Wisconsin Army National Guard in 1980 and joined Detachment 1 as a cadet after entering the Reserve Officer Training Corps at UW-Platteville, serving with the detachment for about seven years before going active duty. He described his time in the unit as a fantastic experience.
“I owe these gentlemen so much — the noncommissioned officers of the 229th,” Rodwell said. “Paul Budden was my platoon sergeant the whole time I was a cadet.” Budden later served as the unit first sergeant.
Even while serving on active duty, Rodwell crossed paths with the Wisconsin Army National Guard when he served as the senior Army advisor from 2008-12. During that stint, he deployed to Afghanistan in 2010-11 in support of Joint Task Force 435, a detainee operations mission.
“I was doing base camp planning. I was doing engineer assessments for facilities well beyond my capabilities,” Rodwell said. Molitor and Col. Jeff Liethen — Rodwell’s company commander from his cadet days — provided long-distance guidance.
“There was no formal tie or anything — just that professional relationship and that desire to serve,” Rodwell said. “The incredible story of America is how the National Guard really contributes so much more to the national defense than anybody realizes.”
“The old guys teach the young guys,” Molitor said. “It’s kind of like being a dad. You take that new troop under your wing and you want to see them succeed. You want them to be the best they can be.”
The detachment’s strong relationship went beyond members. Kristy Zenz, the wife of Ron Zenz, who retired from the unit as a platoon sergeant became known as “mom” to the unit.
“Shortly after we got married he finished his military obligation and got out, and it was the most miserable 15 months of our marriage,” Kristy said. “I finally told him, ‘You go back to that unit and join them,’ because every month it was the same thing — ‘I wonder what they’re doing, I wonder where they’re going, I wonder what’s going on.’ So I told him, ‘Go back to the unit, but the kids and I go with you.’
“So we raised our kids with the unit. The guys all knew ‘em, and I became ‘mom.’”
Kristy received phone calls from wives asking where their husbands were on drill weekends.
“I was family support before they ever came up with family support,” she said. “The guys were a very tight-knit group. That camaraderie made it a really good place to be, a really good place to raise kids. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It was life — it was our life.”
Brig. Gen. Daniel Pulvermacher, Wisconsin’s assistant adjutant general for readiness and training, was the only alumni of the detachment at the reunion who is still serving. Jantzen was his platoon sergeant for a time.
Pulvermacher said he served as an engineer equipment platoon leader, a maintenance platoon leader, executive officer and company commander during his time with the 229th. He said what he remembered most about his eight years with the unit was the people.
“Very dedicated, very hard-working,” Pulvermacher said. “A lot of very good people.”
Roger Zee of Monroe was the detachment commander from 1986-90. He finished his military career at State Area Command in Madison (STARC) before it became Joint Force Headquarters.
“This was the highlight of my Army career,” he said of his time in the detachment. “No doubt about it.”
Zee remembered several community projects — a ballfield in Seneca, an athletic field in Cashton, a project at O’Leary Lake. The unit had equipment that other engineer units, including some in the active duty, didn’t have such as rock crushers, the Clark 290 scraper and 20-ton dump trucks.
“All these guys were excellent operators,” Zee said, “because many of them did it in their civilian jobs. We couldn’t have gotten any better operators for the equipment.”
That equipment and experience came in handy when the unit was tasked with a large project at the 128th Air Refueling Group in Milwaukee in the 1980s. The group was gaining additional KC-135 Stratotankers and needed additional parking pads at their base, located at Mitchell Field International Airport. To complete the job, additional dump trucks had to be ferried over from Michigan.
“That was a huge project,” Zee recalled. “There was a lot of logistics.”
Zee said the ballfield project in Seneca meant a lot to him.
“The Seneca project was one I was more or less in charge of,” he explained. “Building their athletic fields, we had to stay there over the weekend, stay in the school. We moved a lot of dirt.”
Breuer listed additional community projects, but by no means a comprehensive list, like earth work at the Highground Veterans Memorial Park in Neillsville, area airports in Necedah and Elmira, land grading at UW-Platteville, several school projects in Platteville, the racetrack at the Grant County fairgrounds, and shooting ranges.
“This legacy is just incredible,” Breuer said.
