----- Original Message -----
From: Hines, Monte P MVR
To: 'JD Poss'
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2000 11:07 AM
Subject: Meaning and History of the Engineer Term

"ESSAYONS"


Meaning - "Let Us Try"

History:

THE ENGINEER

BUTTON

The Corps of Engineers' oldest and most time honored insignia is the exclusive Essayons Button. It has not changed in basic design since the war of 1812. It is still the required button for the Army Engineers' uniform.


Evidence which could establish the actual facts concerning the designing and adoption of the Essayons Button probably burned at West Point in 1838, when the building containing the library and earliest official Corps of Military Academy records caught fire.


However, while early Army regulations mentioned the "button of Engineers... with only the device and motto heretofore established", apparently no authoritative detailed description of the button appeared until 1840. The Army prescribed new uniforms on February 18, 1840, in General Orders 7, AGO, which officially described the button as follows:


An eagle holding in his beak a scroll with the word, 'Essayons,' a bastion with embrasures in the distance, surrounded by water, and rising sun; the figures to be of dead gold upon a bright field."


In 1902, when the Army adopted "regulation" buttons, it allowed only the Corps of Engineers to retain its own distinctive Essayons Button in recognition of the distinguished traditions that it symbolized.Song:


THE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS
BRANCH SONG "ESSAYONS"


Essayons, sound out the battle cry

Essayons, we'll win or we'll die

Essayons, there's nothing we won't try

We're the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Pin the castle on my collar

I've done my training for the team

You can call me an engineer soldier

The warrior spirit has been my dream

We are builders, we are fighters

We are destroyers just as well

There've been doubters who met with the sappers

1 - We know our sappers will never fail

OR

2 - And then we blew them all straight to hell

Our brothers fighting on the battlefield

Look to us to point the way

We get there first and then we take the risks

To build the roads and the air strips

And bridge the mighty river streams

We don't care who gets the glory

We're sure of one thing, this we know

Somewhere out there an engineer soldier

Designed the plan for the whole darn show

Essayons whether in war or peace

We will bear our red and our white

Essayons we serve America

And the U.S. Army Corps of engineers

Essayons! Essayons!