THE EARTHMOVERS

[Music] remember the good old days we were using an American engineer equipment to build our skyscrapers and roads and bridges and dams big slow-moving stuff nice to look at on a lazy afternoon digging the foundations for the skyscrapers crawling away down on the farm piling up concrete for the dams we got used to the steam shovels and tractors and all the other machines like we got used to the flavor well a lot of us are using in America using them again now and a lot of places we never dreamed of seeing hard to think of bulldozers and road rollers and stuff like that fighting a war but they're doing it and winning it you guys in the factories and us guys out in the field where the muscle men the sweat men the jackhammer boys we got our own little specialty in this war work you hear a lot about manpower sea power we can give him the lowdown on work power that's a beach that sea Power has brought the troops to we cleared it of Mines we laid those landing mats that's a road cut through the heart of the jungle we built it that's a bridge that firepower is moving across we built it that's an airstrip that air power is landing on we built it we did it engineers and Seabees and the guys who made our hard hitting hard digging equipment it's tough on the men who haven't got it take the Chinese there forth to clear an airstrip by hand takes months we do it with machines and ours and in India is their power tools what they do with elephants in a year we do with machines and minutes when we went into North Africa there were nine areas I have here later there were 127 we deal in real estate our job is to shove it around our job is to move the earth and before our job is done the planes don't fly in the ships don't sail and the men don't fight where the deadlines boys until our job is done the war starts they call this an engineer war they call the bulldozer America's secret weapon and we guys will use it but you guys will make it to know just how important it is soldier named Montgomery English soldiers said you can do everything with a bulldoze of a shave with it this little baby has plenty of big brothers doing plenty of odd jobs unloading supplies pulling down walls pushing down walls bearing rubble blaring the beaches helping tanks out of trouble helping jeeps out of trouble helping boats had a trouble moving the earth moving it faster than it's ever been moved by an army before a lot of guys want a Jeep when this wars over brother give me a bulldozer and a new bag [Music] American soldier general Kenny said war in the Pacific is one-third one-third engineers one-third everything else right now those bombs are doing a face lifting job making hash out of a [ __ ] airfield once they've done this and infantry troops captured our job begins yours and ours our equipment has got to move that earth and move it fast so that the 130r can have something a plan is planes on some of those men out there a CB some army engineers makes no difference we need some equipment because some of it got used up because some of it got blown up we borrow or steal it from each other we get the job done that's your heavy stuff out there out in the middle of the Pacific most of it came from Chicago Cleveland Peoria Springfield Milwaukee Portland Detroit all of it moving working building the tractors and the shovels Makarios and the motor graders turning a bunch of churned up geography into the arrow pointed at Japan once this field is finished it'll take a lot less time to get the Tokyo but until it's finished the war is moving at the speed of one of us cat Skinner's on a bulldozer at the speed of one of you fellas hitting him out here's a portable maintenance unit right at the spot heavy equipment is rough and tough but sand and mud salt water and air the constant three-shift use these machines take would wear down the rock of ages' take a gander at that mess of Earth before we moved in on it well here it is after finish hundreds like it out here in the Pacific because that tractor which used to crawl around the cornfield is out on the firing line now these planes are flying over another former [ __ ] island Bougainville it's now a jet graveyard and an American advance base one more problem for the Seabees and engineers in these western islands soft earth swampers no support there for a fighter or a bomber but the boys back home at the answers steel flight takes portable landing that's you make them we use them lay ourselves an airstrip like linoleum here in Bougainville or the climate steam-heated or up in the Aleutians where it's ice condition this airstrip was built by bulldozers and steam shovels and carpeted by a million and a half square feet of prefabricated steel no you don't think of engineer equipment winning a war but today flames are taking off to bomb para Monsieur from these outpost runway [Music] yeah we set the pace for the rest of this army but the time our equipment builds the roads that move the supplies to the front soldier named Jerome French soldier said those crazy American engineers they could build a two-lane highway right into the front lines we could too because we've got the tough powerful machines to do the job but the time some of the roads lead to this and a plume right left and center and Sicily the Germans blow 160 of it that was nothing compared to Italy and as fast as they smashed we taught some kind of bridge across one of these a steel Treadway with rubber pontoons a fixed trestle semi-permanent or what have you at Pointe Kalama the Nazis pull this one they blew a hole 150 feet long and the road shelf itself drop a rockin and never stop rolling till it hit the sea we had to put the whole third division thousands and n thousands of vehicles over that spot fan we did it we saw a bridge across that hole took us 24 hours we're still making that deadline we did it with our air compressors our jackhammers all the engineer equipment made for emergencies like these by the work of you men and women back in America we did it with work out here let's not cheese that [ __ ] drilling there's no circus net under that tightrope walker [Music] here comes the first Jeep cut the commanding general in it we wanted to send over a test Jeep but he just got in and came over he knew that bridge was ready you're looking at the city of Naples when the Nazis got through with it here's the harbor ship scuttled piers blasted no good taking the city without sailing our supplies into the port [Music] allied officers headed to take three weeks before the engineers could have the first dock ready for a supply ship we set up our cranes and got to work three weeks first supplies unloaded in three days and in Naples besides American build equipment repairing the harbor American build equipment was saving live the Germans had destroyed the water system the Italian people had to get water anyway we even saw them draining the sewers then uh purification apparatus moved in water that we guys were forbidden to swim in came out okay for drinking and was piped right into the city [Music] yep we deal in water our job is to use it damn it move it crosses sometimes we have to fight it here in Italy we fought a river of altar no we fought it with our weapons engineer bridging equipment [Music] the river was tough tore up a lot of our stock and trade it tore up a lot of our men poor bulldozer drivers died at their wheels in this operation [Music] but we licked of alterna we got the fifth army across here engineer equipment has gone to war all right all kinds of camouflage nets well drilling equipment [Music] searchlights [Music] generators for the searchlights nine detectives Terios turn apples pneumatic Pontins steel treadway's steel max shovels jackhammers Road rollers sheepsfoot rollers trains drag lines bulldozers these are our secret weapons showing the Nazis and jeff's a new kind of American power they never dreamed of the works flower of those who make them and know though users yeah we need American engineer equipment more and more for all the places these convoys are sailing to we need it because it's one third of winning this war lots of ships down there loaded with equipment from home not all of it reaches us some of it lines up like this like the supplies men get burned up food there are the guys waiting to work with the stuff you make the only time we stop working is when we fight and don't think we don't fight engineers were the first American ground troops to see action and the southwest Pacific in a - and the Aleutians Seabees stop the Jets at Salerno and Tarawa the beaches are still red with our blood a lot of Engineers and Seabees are lying under those crosses beside the a strips and roads and bridges they build so that the rest of us in Peoria and Casino in Milwaukee and the Marshalls in Chicago and Kiska in Portland and on the Lido Road in Detroit and Anzio in Springfield and Cape Gloucester in Cleveland and Bougainville so that the rest of us can keep on working and fighting [Music]