Can Do: the story of the Seabees, by William Bradford Huie (HC, 1944, $3)
What amazing things people can do when they have to. At the end of the 1930s the United States woke up to having no Pacific naval bases other than Pearl. Oops...
Civilian construction workers were hired to change all that. Unfortunately there wasn't enough time. Some men didn't liked the job, even though the pay was great, and went home. Some sites were captured by the Japanese, who imprisoned the workers, even though they had not tried to fight back. Bringing in more civilians wouldn't work, but what would?
Enter the Mobile Construction Battalion, whose motto in Latin was abbreviated "C.B." These men were not regular soldiers. They were way too old to be drafted, and would be leaving families and good paying jobs. Still they signed up to build roads, runways, bridges or anything else the navy needed. The work wasn't boring. Not only did they build things on the front lines, but sometimes they actually worked in front of the lines! Especially in the beginning they received little equipment and little military training, but they made do, working right in the open where Japanese fighters could bomb and strafe them. Then, once the planes were gone, the Seabees would get up from their trenches, fix the holes the bombs had made, and get back to work, all the time watching the sky for more enemy planes. Usually the next attack wasn't long in coming.
Not included in this 1944 book are the more recent successes of the Seabees. Where ever construction needed to be done, there they were: Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and now Iraq and Afghanistan. They provided help after natural disasters. They even built several bases in Antarctica!
One Seabee actually went on to change the world, sort of. When William Levitt came home from war he found an acute lack of homes. After pondering the problem he came up with a way to build homes quickly and cheaply. Levittown, PA is still famous, and his techniques still used.
Look for this book on the new non-fiction table. (L- WWII)
