(2 of 2)
Beyond everyday tasks, the Construction Battalions have undertaken and accomplished some fantastically difficult special jobs. One crew, faced with a wrecked floating dry dock, refused to take a famed wreck-raiser's "can't do" for an answer, patched the maimed thing internally, hauled it off the New England rocks and towed it triumphantly to port. Another gang hammered and welded away below decks in a bomb-blasted aircraft carrier while the ship was steaming back into another action, got a "well done" for its job.
The Seabees also build barracks, hospitals, wharves, roads, water and oil tanks, set up plants and radio stations, mend the thin mahogany hulls of PT boats. Their cocky claim is that they are "first to land and last to leave." Not even the Marines (traditionally first ashore) can dispute that boast.
*Nicknamed from C.B.s—for Construction Battalions.