Can-Do at Guadalcanal!

[Carolyn]

Can-Do at Guadalcanal - The Seabee story of Guadalcanal begins on the afternoon of August 20, 1942, when 45 year old Commander Joseph P. Blundon (CEC, USNR) arrived in a PBY off Lunga Point and promptly reported to General A.A. Vandergrift. I guess I was the first Seabee to go under fire, Commander Blundon recalled. The Marines had been on Guadalcanal thirteen days, and they had a tiny beachhead around Henderson Field. While I was reporting to General Vandergrift, the Jap bombers came over and I hit my first foxhole. A few days later my Sixth Seabee Battalion arrived, and we assumed full responsibility for the completion and maintenance of Henderson Field. The Japs had cleared an area 300 by 5600 feet, but it was by no means finished. The Japs were shelling the field with Howitzers, as well as bombing it night and day, and it was our job to keep the holes filled up while we finished the grading, laid Marston mat, built hardstands and revetments, and helped solve the fuel and ammunition problems. We had very little equipment, General Vandergrift assigned us a section of the beach to defend against the Jap landings, and we figured we could defend the beach and still do the job at Henderson Field. We realized at the outset that the battle was going to turn on how fast we filled up holes and how fast we could develop that field. When the Jap bombers approached, our fighters took off, the bombers blasted the airstrips, and then if we couldn't fill up those holes before our planes ran out of fuel, the planes would have to attempt to land anyway, and they would crash. I saw seven of our fighters crack up in one bitter afternoon. From "our" point of view the battle of Guadalcanal was a race between the Jap artillery and the air force and the Sixth Seabee Battalion. We played our cards fast. We pitched our camp at the edge of the field to save time. We dug our foxholes right up alongside the landing area. We found that a 500 pound bomb would tear up 1600 square feet of Marstom Mat, so we placed packages of this quantity of mat along the strip, like extra rails along a railroad. We figured out how much sand and gravel was required to fill the average bomb or shell crater, and we loaded these measured amounts on trucks and placed the trucks under cover at strategic points. We had compressors and pneumatic hammers to pack the fill into the craters. We organized human assembly lines for passing up the pierced plank and laying it. Then when the Jap bombers approached, every Seabee including even our cooks, manned his repair station. Our crater crews were lying in the foxholes right at the edge of the strip. The moment the bombers had passed over, these men boiled out of the holes and raced for the craters. Every man had to keep his eye peeled for Jap strafing planes, and when the Jap dived in, our men dived for the close at hand foxholes. We found that 100 Seabees could repair the damage of a 500-pound bomb hit on an airstrip on forty minutes. In twenty four hours on October 13 and 14, fifty-three bomb and shells hit the Henderson airstrip. During one hour on the 14th we filled thirteen bomb craters while our planes circled overhead waiting to land. In the period from September 1, to November 18, we had 140 Jap raids in which the strip was hit at least once. Our worst moments were when the Jap bomb or shell failed to explode when it hit. It still tore up our mat, and it had to come out. "When you see men choke down their fear and dive in after an unexploded bomb so that our planes can land safely, a lump comes in your throat and you know why America wins wars". Shell craters are more dangerous to work on than bomb craters. You have a feeling that no two bombs ever hit in the same place, but this isn't true of shells. A Jap five-inch gun lobs a shell over on your airstrip and blasts a helluva hole. What are you going to do? You know, just as the that Jap artillery man knows, that if he leaves his gun in the same position and fires another shell, the second shell will hit in almost the same spot as the first one. So a good old Jap trick was to give us enough time to start repairing the hole and then fire the second shell. All you can do is depend on hearing that second shell coming and hope you can scramble far enough away before it explodes. But this is a gamble which is frowned upon by life insurance companies.

[j3rdinf]

Can Do was the official name of the 15th Inf Regt of the 3rd Inf Div. Check up on the

Regimental Crest of the 15th Inf Regt. Well prior to the C.B.'s.

[Walt's Daughter]

Actually Joe I have to back him up on this one, for there is a book called,

 

Can Do!: The Story of the Seabees (Bluejacket Books Series) (Paperback)

 

Here's the book that can be found on Amazon.com's site:

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/155750379...glance&n=283155

 

But you are correct also:

 

http://www.geocities.com/eureka/plaza/7750.../15thinf02.html

 

http://www.cafepress.com/support3id.30678554

 

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=C...5th&btnG=Search

[Thurman]

Bucky Meyer - Silver Star Citation Guadalcanal, 6th Naval Construction Battalion

 

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity during action against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands, October 3, 1942. While working on construction and maintenance of an airfield, Meyer manned a machine gun mounted in a pit where he had taken shelter during an air raid alarm. Acting unhesitatingly and beyond the call of regular duty, he fired on enemy Zeroes during the Japanese strafing attack which followed, and it was observed that tracer bullets from his gun repeatedly struck an enemy plane which was shot down. On October 16, 1942, he was killed in action while working on a pontoon barge loaded with gasoline which was struck by an enemy bomb. He gallantly gave up his life in the service of his country

[Walt's Daughter]

Here's to Bucky. God love him. No one will ever know what he gave and what he felt. His love of God and country far exceed what most people would ever know and feel.

[Thurman]

GUADALCANAL: "If they had been visitors from Mars, the men of the 63rd NCB could scarcely have been more out of their element. That was the case when they arrived on Guadalcanal in June 1943."

 

Towering trees, dense vegetation, a fantasy land of "lizards as large as small crocodiles, snakes that fly, toads that eat flesh and fish that climb trees." And, the scattered remnants of a Japanese military force, although defeated, refusing to surrender.

 

Guadalcanal, its name equated with a hard-fought campaign that began on Aug. 7, 1942, was now the main route on the highway across the Pacific's island-hopping campaign to victory. A route marked by the skills, labor, sweat and determination of the Seabees who scratch-built airfields, harbor facilities and piers, and constructed roads, barracks, hospitals, fuel depots and massive supply dumps. Seabees were the workforce of the Pacific.

 

Unglamorous and backbreaking, the 63rd's initial major project on "the Canal" was an 80-square-mile program to destroy the breeding grounds of malaria-carrying insects "by swamp and lagoon draining, stream clearance and depression filling." Work started on June 24. When completed, more than 20 miles of roads, "16.5 miles, as a last resort, by hand labor," had been constructed by the 664 officers and men assigned. Some 100 miles of stream ran free to the sea. The Seabees moved 400,000 cubic yards of earth to level and fill water-filled depressions.

 

"Lagoons, land-locked by sand-bars, were fitted with oil-drum culverts to permit excess tidal fluctuations to vary the lagoon level. The inflow of salt water at high tide rendered lagoon water sufficiently alkaline to inhibit mosquito breeding."

 

The 63rd's history notes, "there was little fun on these jobs," but as footnote, "there were some thrills." Massive, more than 60, air raids by Japanese bombers. An encounter with Japanese troops on a tropical trail. And "it's no fish story," the 10-foot crocodile that chased a work party out of the Tenaru River.

 

There was also the trial of a 63rd Seabee.

 

He was charged with leaving his shipmates without permission and striking out with the 1st Marine Raider Battalion when that unit assaulted Japanese forces near Bairoka Harbor, at Munda. He was exonerated when the Marine officer in charge of the operation initiated a Silver Star recommendation, the nation's third highest honor for heroism. The man "attached himself to a machine gun crew, serviced and manned the gun with devastating effect upon the enemy when all other members of the crew had been killed or disabled by mortar fire."

 

There were other commendations and citations as the 63rd moved across the Pacific during 1944 and 1945. Journeys by convoys to Auckland, New Zealand, and Noumea, New Caledonia; return to Guadalcanal; and transit to the island of Emirau, "a tiny dot in the vast expanse of the Pacific."

 

Emirau, in the St. Matthias group of the Bismarck Archipelago, was transformed from raw jungle, coral and sand by the 63rd and three other Seabee battalions [27th, 61st and 88th Seabees, commanded by the 18th Regiment--SCK]. It became a massive advance naval base with all the functions of a harbor port military city, including an airfield.

 

Six months of two, six-hour shifts per man, per day, and the job was completed. Board ships again, to the Admiralty Islands, and construct another massive base at Manus, recently secured from the Japanese.

 

Work at Manus progressed into 1945, and the 63rd followed the news of U.S. ground and naval forces, which had begun the liberation of the Philippines. Rumor spread the Seabees would be sent back to the states by April for deactivation. Rumor proved wrong.

 

"It was on a bright and sunny Sunday, 25 March, that troops boarded the SS Mexico with full infantry gear for the voyage to Manila. . . . Slow progress was made in the South China Sea, but Luzon loomed on the northeastern horizon in the early afternoon of Friday, 6 April."

 

The 63rd Seabees newest camp was in the Manila suburb of Pasay. The unit's major assignment was the construction of 7th Fleet headquarters, a massive 40-acre project of buildings and facilities on the war-ruined site of the former Manila Polo Club. Work on that project ended for these Seabees on Sunday, July 22, a day described in their history as "drizzling." But, a day with a brighter tomorrow. There was an announcement, and it was official. The 63rd was heading stateside.

 

July 24, 1945, more than two years since they had departed for "Island X," the Seabees of the 63rd sailed for an unnoticed and unheralded 3:45 a.m. arrival in San Francisco on Aug. 15, 1945.

[Walt's Daughter]

My husband read your posts today and was telling me that our Uncle Chum (he is now deceased) was a Seabee and was in the Pacific. He is going to try and find out more about his tour of duty.

[Thurman]

Try to find out what Battalion he was in? I have a book that lists every Battalion and where they served. I might even have the cruisebook for the battalion he was in.