Basic Training

The commercial ice plant arrived ready to assemble in Chu Lai, Vietnam, from Japan in the summer of 1968 with virtually no instructions, but that had never stopped U.S. Navy Mobile Construction Battalion 8 before. The plant would churn out massive blocks of ice about 1 foot thick, 1½ feet to 2 feet wide, and about 6 feet long, to be used in hospitals and mess halls.

A plan to inaugurate the plant quickly developed, and the team called on the skills of Petty Officer 2nd Class Eldon “Mac” McWilliams, a wisecracking New Englander with one tour of duty already under his belt. A crew chief on an adjoining project, McWilliams assisted in the time-honored Seabee tradition of “moonlight procurement” to obtain the necessary supplies and materials to produce the first block. It was, to say the least, ingenious.

“We poured in all the packs of Kool-Aid we could find,” McWilliams says, “stuck a 2x4 in it, and made the biggest Popsicle you've ever seen.”

Then, true to their mission of providing military support, they made a dozen more and delivered them to elated Marines in the field, many of whom had not eaten anything except unheated, tasteless C-rations for some time.

“That was fun,” says McWilliams, now a project estimator for Harvey Industries, a Massachusetts-based window and door manufacturer. “The rest of your life is almost blasé.”

Maybe McWilliams thinks so, but the students he taught carpentry, cabinetmaking, and architectural drafting at a vocational school for 25 years might disagree. So might the inmates to whom he taught furniture-making in the state prison system. Or the soldiers he taught as an Army Reservist.

“WE BUILD, WE FIGHT”: Since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, this has been the motto of the Navy Seabees, who are trained in both construction and combat. Over the decades, battalions such as this one in Iraq have built landing strips, bridges, hospitals, schools, and much more in active war zones.

“I definitely found the teaching of future contractors, and the passing on of my military knowledge to future military leaders, personally rewarding,” McWilliams says. “Had it not been for the Seabees, who extended my basic vocational school training in carpentry into many general areas, and the leadership skills taught in the service, my life would have turned out much differently.”

It's a theme often expressed by veterans of the Navy's Construction Battalions, nicknamed Seabees for the initials “C.B.” Many were barely out of high school when they were handed budgets of millions of dollars and the responsibility for managing large crews. As it did for McWilliams, the experience often set a course for their life's work.

The Seabees were created by the Navy within weeks of the bombing of Pearl Harbor because there was a need to do construction in war zones. Civilian contractors who had been building bases in the Pacific were “fair game to the Japanese,” says Bill Hilderbrand, a retired Navy captain in the Civil Engineering Corps, the officers corps of the Seabees, and president of the Civil Engineering Corps/Seabee Historical Foundation. “They weren't armed or equipped, so [the Navy] pulled them all back.” But the base-building activity couldn't be abandoned, so the Navy recruited tradesmen from the construction fields in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and even into their 60s. About half of a battalion, a force of 1,000 to 1,200 men, would be these older, experienced builders, and half would be young men in their late teens and early 20s. In addition to learning construction, they were trained in combat.

By the end of World War II, 325,000 men had enlisted in the Seabees, which still operates under the motto “We Build, We Fight.” Today, roughly 10,000 sailors are serving as Seabees on active duty around the world, with another 7,000 to 8,000 serving in the Naval Reserves. When they're not building things such as bridges or Antarctic research facilities, they engage in humanitarian efforts including the construction of a Kurdish refugee center and helping rebuild after the deadly tsunami in Asia. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Seabees have been working to reopen sewage and water treatment plants near Gulfport, Miss. They've also been renovating area schools and helping residents remove debris and clean up their property. Several veteran Seabees—and one still on active duty—who made careers in construction shared their stories with Builder.

John Carpenter knew exactly what the relief efforts would be like after Hurricane Katrina tore apart Gulfport, Miss. He was there when Hurricane Camille slammed into the state in 1969, stationed at the Naval Construction Battalion Center.

“We worked pretty much night and day, putting on roofs after the hurricane. ... People would give the teams their last bit of water when they didn't have any themselves. It was pretty rewarding in that respect.”

About three months later, his battalion shipped out for Vietnam. Acollege graduate who was already a builder when he joined the Navy, Carpenter was given a small squad to command. His detachment was assigned road and bridge work, a task that frequently brought them under attack. They also built “wonder arches,” concrete airplane hangars that were rocket-proof. “I'd never had that type of responsibility before,” he says. “You just grow up real quick.”

Returning to the United States, Carpenter taught high school industrial arts for two years. From there, he became a framing carpenter until he got his contractor's license. Today, he has his own company, John Carpenter Custom Homes, in Nashville, Tenn.

Some family members not only tried to dissuade John Osborn from enlisting in the Navy as an officer in 1968, photos: inset: courtesy eldon mcwilliams; bottom: courtesy cec/seabee historical foundation but they even tried to convince him to go to Canada. He had other plans.

LIFE TRAINING: Eldon McWilliams (inset), during his first tour of duty in Vietnam, says the skills he learned in the Seabees laid the foundation for his life's work—including teaching future builders in both high school and prison workshops. It's still true for Seabees such as these in Iraq (right).

“I had a civil engineering degree,” says Osborn, now CEO of Denver-based Village Homes. “I wanted to build things. I liked the Seabees, I liked what they did, and I felt it would be a more direct experience than what I saw Army or Air Force engineers doing.”

His first command, though, was in a cargo-handling battalion. But he took advantage of the position to develop his leadership skills. He took several detachments on training cruises, including going to the Antarctic to offload ships there. Plus, he had the opportunity to help some of his men, who came from very poor families and were struggling with their first taste of adulthood.

“My first couple years I was in the Navy, I probably did 100 tax returns a year for young enlisted men,” Osborn says.

From there, he was put in charge of Seabees in Saigon, managing the activities of teams scattered through the southern part of the country. He traveled extensively and helped teams build schools, bridges, and roads and trained Vietnamese nationals in construction trades.

“It was an incredible learning and life experience,” Osborn says. “At the time, you wondered why you were doing it and why you hadn't been able to avoid it, but 10, 20 years later, those skills and values and capabilities came into play. ... I'm not sure I learned a lot about building things, but I learned a lot about motivating people and helping them accomplish great things.”

Kevin St. Onge enlisted in the Navy as a high school senior in 1983 because he didn't want to go to college, he wanted to learn construction, and he wanted to get out of Bedford, Mass. “It was a small town,” says St. Onge. “I wanted to get away and learn something at the same time. It suited me for exactly what I wanted to do. ... I credit that time with a lot of where I am now.” Indeed. Today, he is the production manager for Thomas Buckborough and Associates, a residential designer and builder in Concord, Mass. The skills he uses now—estimating jobs, coordinating trade contractors, expediting, and keeping jobs on schedule—are essentially the ones he learned as a 19-year-old in the Seabees.

“I was in charge of a crew,” he says. “It was a pretty important role for a young person. I had a lot of responsibility at a very young age.”

And he did get out of Bedford. His battalion was based in Port Hueneme, Calif., and he also went to England and Spain.

The best part for St. Onge about the Seabees, though, was the people and the camaraderie they shared. “I have a picture on my wall of the guys I worked with,” he says. “They had me covered, I had them covered. It was an unspoken thing.”

When Carl Loescher was a student in the architecture school at the University of Oklahoma, he heard stories about a former dean, Bruce Goff, who was a Seabee. He thought the program would give him valuable construction knowledge and signed up through a program called Sea Air Mariner.

MISSION CRITICAL: Seabees provide vital troop support by building and maintaining roads, bridges, and other infrastructure (above, in Iraq). Inset, a crew takes a break from a 1987 project in Rota, Spain. Kevin St. Onge (front row, second from left) says that the Seabees gave him “a lot of responsibility at a very young age.”

He took a semester off from college and went through active duty boot camp, followed by 13 weeks of construction school. He then went into the Navy Reserves and finished his degree. He's been in the Reserves since 1992. Today, when he's not working as an architect for Denver-based Village Homes, he teaches basic combat skills to Seabee battalions being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Loescher says he has benefited greatly from the skills he learned in the Seabees. “When I go to job-sites, when the [supers] find out I'm in the Seabees, they give me more respect,” he says. “Usually, when architects come on the site, superintendents think we're the crazy people who don't know anything.”

He's also learned valuable leadership skills, such as mentoring associates.

“The main difference in the civilian world,” Loescher says, “is that you don't yell at [employees] and tell them to drop and give you 20. Sometimes I wish I could.”