WE BUILD, WE FIGHT

in the early days of the war the need for Seabees were so urgent that we often had to send them overseas without a full complement of materials and equipment and without much military training however this never seemed to bother them the CB knack for borrowing bartering midnight requisitions and improvising quickly became legendary the Seabees were less than six months old when their first unit came under fire in August 1942 only three weeks after the Marines hit the beach at Guadalcanal Seabees of the 6th naval construction battalion came ashore their job was to convert a muddy landing strip at Henderson field into an all-weather airfield capable of handling anything from fighters to b-17 the job was tough [Music] Anderson field was under almost constant attack by Japanese artillery and aircraft [Music] the men of the six Seabees spent as much time repairing damage as they did building throughout the three-month battle for Guadalcanal the Seabees performed construction miracles they expanded Henderson field and they kept it open and operational at one point the Seabees kept working even when Japanese troops came within a hundred and fifty feet of the field there were a lot of heroes in dungarees that day one of the most unusual acts of individual Seabee heroism took place during the Treasury Islands campaign in 1943 in the invasion of mono Island first class petty officer Aurelio to Sony came ashore on his bulldozer only to find that the Japanese pillbox was holding up the advance while a CB lieutenant provided covering fire with a carbine to saury raised his bulldozer played as a shield and advanced on the pillbox at the last moment he dropped the blade and buried the emplacement even while to Sony was destroying the pillbox other Seabees were coming ashore on the magic box this all-purpose piece of equipment was developed by my war plans officer Captain John Leacock it was a 5x5 by 7 foot sealed steel box which proved to be the most versatile tool the Seabees had it could be assembled in many arrangements for a wide variety of uses such as bridges and dry docks strings of pontoons became barges or cosway's and if you hitched an outboard motor to them you had a large or small ferry or a moveable raft there were unverified rumors that the Seabees had even adapted them for the distillation of spirituous liquors although widely used in the Pacific the magic box earned its outstanding reputation in Europe in 1943 the Allies landed on Sicily shallow beaches prevented the LS T's and other large landing craft from getting close to the shore so the Seabees made causeways of the pontoons and used them to span the distance between the landing craft and the beach in minutes vehicles and equipment rolled ashore at Normandy captain lacox want to prove useful in a different way planners of Operation Overlord faced a difficult problem the slope of Omaha and Utah beaches was unusually flat and just offshore lay the hazard of constantly shifting sandbars the problem how to keep the landing craft from being stranded the solution have the Seabees make motor powered ferries of their pontoons during the first days of the Normandy invasion despite severe weather mines and German gunfire the Seabees shuttled their ferries between the beaches and the fleet they landed thousands of trucks and tanks and tons of supplies this.cb supply line started our troops on the road to Berlin [Music] [Applause] at the same time our forces were steadily advancing against the Japanese in the Pacific War by the summer of 1944 we had reached the Marianas less than 2,000 miles from Japan itself on July 24th the Marines swarmed ashore on Tinian even before the Marines secured the island Seabees began work on their biggest single job in the war the construction of the world's largest airbase a base that would enable the big b-29s to carry the war to the Japanese homeland working in 10-hour shifts the Seabees built the base in record time they built six runways of asphalt concrete each a mile and a half long and 500 feet wide and they built 29 miles of connecting taxiways by the time the job was done the Seabees had moved more than 11 million cubic yards of Earth and Carl on August 6 1945 the b-29 Enola Gay took off from the base on Tinian and two hours later over Hiroshima she inflicted a mortal wound on the enemy but the war over the Seabees came home the original 3000 had swelled to more than a quarter of a million they had performed magnificently in only three and a half years their motto of can-do had earned them an honored place in history now it was time to forge the swords into plowshares the world was at peace unfortunately this peace was short-lived only five years later the North Koreans swept south across the 38th parallel and Americans were again called to arms on September 15 1950 Seabees of amphibious Construction Battalion number one brought the 1st Marine Division ashore at Incheon with the advent of the Korean War it became obvious that the Navy needed a broader base of operations in the Philippines the Seabees were tapped to do the job their project a major air and sea facility at Kuby point on Subic Bay they began in 1951 working as many as three shifts a day six days a week the Seabees spent five years carving jungle and mountains into a first-class modern base for the fleet huge trees some as tall as a hundred and fifty feet had to be blasted out of the way swamps had to be filled and an entire native village relocated when finished QB Point became the major base for the carriers of the seventh Fleet and to date it stands as a sea biggest single construction operation while the Seabees at foobie points sweat it under the Tropic Sun others in the different clime were hard put to keep warm in 1947 Seabees went south with the Byrd expedition in Antarctica these snow bees built on the ice built everything from roads to runways powder rooms to hospitals their support was vital to America's Antarctica operations each year thereafter the Seabees returned to the land of the South Pole and each year their contribution has been more significant in 1962 atomic power came to Antarctica courtesy of the Seabees the nuclear reactor installed at McMurdo Station not only produces heat and electric power but also manufactures fresh water by distilling seawater during the post Korean pre-vietnam period the need for a new kind of sea be developed a people-to-people CV [Music] this new breed of B serves as a member of a CB team 13 dedicated men working in the underdeveloped parts of the world helping people to help themselves totally breathe in the note the CB team concept was born in 1960 when an Atlantic CB detachment was sent on a mercy mission to Haiti Lake Marroquin was flooding and the southern tip of the island was in danger of being isolated the detachment working with the local people established a lifeline by building a pontoon bridge causeway and access road in January 1963 CB teams deployed to Thailand and South Vietnam in Southeast Asia these CB team members or water beetles as the Vietnamese call them have been trading and building for the future CB teams are engaged mostly in civic action but they also have provided some military support early in the Vietnam struggle CB team 1104 was assigned to build a camp for the Army's Special Forces at Dongs oi they were attacked by a large force of Vietcong the Seabees and army troops fought valiantly and the attack was repulsed one of the team members construction mechanic Marvin shields wiped out a VC but died of wounds received in the action he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for his heroism the CV battalions began their work in South Vietnam on may 7th 1965 when they came ashore with the Marines at you live [Music] the sooner were they on the PTIN they rolled up their sleeves and went to work the first major project was the construction of a critically needed runway at Chula [Music] the Seabees completed this 8,000 foot strip in the back-breaking 23 days [Music] the CD story in Vietnam has been one of magnificent achievement under the most adverse conditions in South Vietnam they literally had to create the soil on which to build despite the problems of terrain weather disease and the Vietcong the Seabees have built in Vietnam at the rate of approximately 8 million dollars worth of construction per month [Music] they carved a difficult road up monkey mountain and then shaved 200 feet off the top for a missile site they have built under fire and they rebuilt what the enemy destroyed one night in October 1965 a devastating VC mortar and gunfire attack all but destroyed a 400 bed hospital the Seavey's were building at Da Nang to Seabees were killed in the attack 93 others were wounded but the men including some of the wounded were on the job the next day and the hospital was finished ahead of schedule to say that the Seabees are distinguishing themselves in Vietnam would be a gross understatement as general Greene Commandant of the Marine Corps put it without the Seabees we could not do it wherever the action is in Vietnam you will find Seabees building instant airfields and ports roads and bridges and the facilities vital to modern sophisticated warfare Seabees are building two ways in Vietnam building to win the piece and building to hold it once it is won [Music] when they leave yet nom they will leave behind not only sound construction but construction skills most important of all they will leave with the Vietnamese the spirit of accomplishment the will to get the job done no matter how tough it is well that's it a brief looked at 25 years of history a quarter century of achievement by the construction men of the United States Navy the building fighting Seabees however this is not the end of the story merely a prologue there will undoubtedly be other careers and haiti's and thailand's and Viet Nam's of one fact you can be sure when the toughest meanest most impossible construction jobs in the world come up they'll send for the Seabees because they know the Seabees can do [Music] [Applause] [Music]