Reprinted from Saga Magazine

the 12 men inside. Tassone earned the field debris before construction work Beach. Silver Star and out of his impromptu could begin. Their job was to build Many Seabee reservists were with the actio'1. came the armored bulldozers everything from sidewalks to bomb new 1st Amphibious Naval Construc which were used so effectively in later proof storage plants for diesel and fuel tion Battalion when it was activated campaigns. oil. and rushed to the Far East in the sum Seabees landed with the first waves By the end of World War II there mer of 1950 following the outbreak of of assault troops in virtually ev~ry · cam were 12 Seabee brigades, 54 Seabee hostilities in Korea. When General paign of the war. The Seabees were in regiments, 151 construction battalions, Douglas MacArthur's planning staff de on the North Africal1. invasion and they 136 CBMUs, 39 special battalions, 118 vised the end-around landing at Inchon were on the beachheads at Sicily and detachments, and five Seabee Naval it was at first opposed by the Navy be Salerno on D-Day. It was at Salerno Pontoon Assembly Detachments. Of cause of the 30-foot change in tide. But that Lieutenant C. E. Olson died a this vast working force which num MacArthur's officers were adamant. In hero's death and his name was later bered more than 325,000 men only four chon was the place to land. given to a new type of landing ramp battalions failed to see overseas service. It was the Seabees of the 1st Amphib which was devised for the cross-channel Few U. S. outfits were as well-frav Batta.lion who came up with the blue attack. eled as 'the Seabees. For example, the prints for an extended pier that would The Seabees were on the Normandy 9th Battalion which began its overseas permit around-the-clock unloading de beaches and among the first into the career in Iceland finished up the war on spite the tide. On both coasts of Korea Port of Cherbourg. Some of them Tinian from where the first A-Bombs the Seabees equipped with new seago moved across France to help the Army were launched. There was the 70th ing 'dozers worked the causeways and cross the Rhine. One battalion, the Battalion which was at Oran and Bi conducted salvage operations. 69th, went all the way-into the heart zerte and Salerno and got to the Pacific The old Seabees of Bora Bora, of Germany. in time to see service on Guam, Iwo Guadalcanal, New Georgia, the Philip They labored to construct giant bases, Jima, and Okinawa. pines, Guam, Iwo Jima-and 393 other 18 that cost the U. S. more than $10 There were the 81st Seabees who wartime base operations-are in civvies million each. All of the 18 except ranged from Falmouth, Britain, to Utah like most of the other naval veterans Trinidad, Argentia, Espiritu Santo, Beach and Paris-then Eniwetok, of that war which ended 11 years ago. Bermuda, New Caledonia, and Milne Ulithi, and Okinawa. There was the Few of them ever learned a belaying' Bay had to be captured from the enemy 146th Battalion which traveled from pin from a capstan, after all. They and cleared of enemy troops and battle- Iceland to Okinawa by way of Omaha were too damn busy! *THE END REPRINTED FROM SAGA MAGAZINE stink and grime of Guadalcanal and out of the muck .and able to see its occupants-laughing, grinning and wavini fever of New Georgia. Can do! to them as the train sped through on its way back to the This was the creed of the horny-handed construction rear area. Crestfallen, a young Marine private turned to men of the Navy-the steam-fitters, cat-skinners, loggers, his platoon sergeant, a middle-aged veteran who had hard-rock drillers, pipe-line experts, and steel-workers seen action in World War II. "Imagine that, Sarge," he who manned the Seabee Battalions from Iceland to said with a sad shake of his head, "there was a bunch of Samoa, from the Aleutians to the Normandy Beachhead. 'doggies' out ahead of us." Now it is a legend, one that is as much a part of "Naw," replied the sergeant, "it's just them damn Naval history as John Paul Jones and "I have not yet Seabees at it again!" begun to fight!" and David Glasgow Farragut and "Damn The Seabees' association with the 1st Marine Division the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" is an old one which dates back to Guadalcanal and the Nor did the Seabee legend end with the victory over frightful battle for Henderson Field. It was there that the the Axis in World War II. Already there are new chapters old 6th Seabees (properly, the 6th U. S. Naval Construc in the story. There is, for example, a story that is told tion Battalion) fought the Japs and simultaneously re of an incident {hat took place during the heavy fighting built Henderson and readied it for the arrival of U. S. Hacking through thousands of miles of coral, for Inchon and the approaches to Seoul on the west coast air support. And it was there that a Marine officer of Korea in September, 1950. The grimy men of the 1st reported to his commanding general: "Those Seabees and jungle, the pick-and-shovel sailors laid Marine Division were pushing inland when a locomotive build roads so fast the Japs are using them for avenues came toward them, chugging its way up tracks miracu of escape." the roads and airstrips that led to victory lously left intact following a vicious mortar and artillery "I don't know how we would have gotten along with duel. Marines swiftly maneuvered into position along the out the Seabees," declared General A. A. Vandegrift of railroad embankment and two of them busied themselves the Marines. General H. M. ("Howling Mad") Smith of with a bazooka as the train came nearer. To their the Marines called the Seabees "the find of this war." BJr BRUCE JACOBS astonis~ent they recognized green fatigue uniforms of And a career Naval officer, Rear Admiral 0. 0. a strictly GI cut. "Wait a second," somebody said, "Those ("Scrappy") Kessing who had a gang of Seabees (from guys aren't North Koreans." the 27th Battalion) under his command in the islands Shell fl.re and bullets raked the cab of the locomotive said of them: "They're a rough, tough, loyal, efficient as it neared the Marine position until at last they were bunch of men who don't give a damn for anything but OOici.al U. S. Navy Ph.otos The Seabees pitch into a military jig-BBw puzzle, deaning up and rebuilding an island blasted to pieces by bombs and artillery. Even their most ardent supporters agreed that signboard adjacent to their Bougainville camp which the men of the United States Navy Construction proclaimed: Battalions were the most unlikely-looking sailors ever to wear the Navy's blues. Their disregard for When we reach the Isle of Japan with our caps conformity was notorious, their penchant for the spec at jaunty tilt, tacular was monumental. We'll enter the city of Tokyo on roads the Organized for immediate overseas duty in the most Seabees built. crucial days of World War II, the pick-and-shovel sailors, the swashbuckling Seabees, became a colorful legend in Seabees saw service in the Mediterranean and in the the jungles and atolls of the Pacific. They shipped out to European Theater of Operations, too. But it is for their the hot spots in the global war before most of them could Pacific duty (82 per cent of the Seabees served in the tell a belaying pin from a capstan and they won a Paul Pacific) that they are best known. Their success was Bunyan-ish reputation for being men who could get spectacular and they were unique in that, despite the things done under the worst conditions available. inter-service rivalry prevalent in the area, the Seabees They were equally expert at fighting and working but were highly regarded by all. They were a hardy lot working was their primary duty. In the Navy there is an particularly the men of the · early battalions (the term old saying that the fleet is as good as its advance bases. Seabees comes from the initials of Construction Battal With their trip-hanuners, bulldozers and giant cranes, ions) who were recruited directly from civil life on the the Seabees gave the Navy-as well as the Army and the basis of their experience in the construction business. fly boys-a string of advance bases and airfields from They were supreme in their self-confidence and it can ·the far reaches of the South Pacific to the doorstep of be truthfully said that they never tackled a job that Japan herself. stumped them. They built airfields at the height of a All told, by V-J Day the Seabees had built more than rainy season when veteran engineers said it couldn't 400 advance bases in the Pacific and in the Atlantic be done. And they did it in record time. They liked to construction jobs that involved the expenditure of the boast that they were among the first to land and the last staggering sum of two billion dollars. The highways they to leave. For the Seabees to put "their mark" on an hacked out of jungle and the airstrips they carved out island meant to transform it from a wilderne:is into a of coral would, if placed end to end, circle the world modern base of operations.

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