Illegitimis non Carborundum

Loosely translated, the title Latin phrase means, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” It is one of the many mottos of the U.S. Navy’s legendary Seabees. “Can do!” is the most common Seabee motto because of their ability to always get the job done quickly. Another is, “We have done so much for so long with so little that now we can do anything with nothing.”

In the long history of the Navy, Seabees are of fairly new origin. In late December 1941, Rear Admiral Ben Moreell, Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, was gravely concerned about the loss of life among civilian construction workers on the Pacific islands that the Japanese had conquered. Realizing that a uniformed Naval Construction Force would be required for the island-hopping campaigns that lay ahead, Moreell proposed the formation of Naval Construction Battalions made up of skilled construction workers. The concept was approved early in 1942. Part of the approval was the authority to grant naval rank based on years of experience in the construction industry.  The initials C.B. spawned the nickname, “Seabees.”

Admiral Moreell approached the Construction Trades Council of the labor unions for help in recruiting construction experts. As a quid pro quo, the admiral promised that Seabees would never be used in the continental U.S. in competition with the civilian construction industry. Thousands of skilled construction men were soon flooding recruiting offices. Many were the men who had built the prodigious public works of the New Deal era.

After a short boot camp in Virginia, the new Seabees were sent to Davisville, Rhode Island, or Port Hueneme, California, and formed into battalions officered by members of the Navy Civil Engineer Corps. One of the Davisville Seabees designed the iconic fighting bee emblem for which the units became famous. Construction battalions were soon deploying to the far-flung battlefronts.

Seabees went ashore at Guadalcanal a couple of weeks after the Marines first landed. They finished the new airfield (Henderson Field) begun by Marine engineers and started building the piers, housing, roads and other facilities necessary to a modern fighting force. With the Japanese Navy bombing and shelling the airfield on a regular basis, Seabees camped in bunkers alongside the runway. As soon as the “all clear” was sounded, they rushed out with their equipment and pre-positioned materials and filled in the holes and installed new steel plank pavement. The Marines were full of praise for how the Seabees kept Henderson Field operating in those crucial months of 1942.

The teenaged Marines were also astounded by how old some Seabees looked. The official average age of the World War II Seabee was 37.  The actual average was much higher. Men in their sixties lied about their age in order to serve. The young Marines developed the saying, “Never hit a Seabee. He may be some Marine’s father!” The Seabees adopted the Marine slogan, “Once a Marine, always a Marine,” into “Once a Seabee, always a Seabee.”  There are no such things as “former Marines” or “former Seabees.”

Over 325,000 Seabees served in World War II.  Besides constructing sprawling based and airfields throughout the Pacific, the Seabees also built and fought on six continents. The amphibious landings at Sicily and Normandy would have been impossible without the Seabees and their pontoon causeways and Rhino ferries. A Marine on Iwo Jima paid the Seabees perhaps the ultimate compliment when he posted the following poem on a roadside sign:

            And when we reach the isles of Japan

            With our hats at a jaunty tilt,

            We’ll enter the city of Tokyo

            On roads that the Seabees built!

Seabees have played pivotal roles in all of America’s conflicts since WWII.  Seabee- placed pontoon causeways allowed the Marines to cross the seawall at Inchon in Korea, reversing the course of the war. Twenty-two active duty and reserve Seabee battalions built the critical ports, bases, roads, and airfields the U.S. forces used in Vietnam. Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the military operations in Afghanistan would not have been possible without widespread Seabee support.

Last month, I spent a weekend at a reunion of Seabees from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Forty. I was Operations Officer of this battalion in 1968 and 1969. My experiences there formed the basis of my Vietnam War novel, Asphalt and Blood. We old Seabees swapped sea stories and generally enjoyed each other’s company.  We also dedicated an NMCB 40 plaque at the Navy Memorial and visited the Vietnam Wall and Korean War Memorial. Although few of us retained the slender bodies of our youth, we still have Seabee fire in our bellies. All retain a fierce espirit de corps and pride in being a Seabee. I felt honored to be in the presence of these valiant Americans and their families.

Balancing Accuracy and Readability in a Story

My current writing project, Asphalt and Blood, has reached the editing stage. The book follows the adventures of U.S. Navy Seabees during the 1968 Battle For Hue City. For the uninitiated, Seabees is a nickname for the famed Navy Construction Battalions formed during World War II to build advanced bases in the Pacific islands and for the war in Europe. Without the airfields, port facilities, and support facilities they constructed, neither the Pacific island campaigns nor the amphibious invasions in Europe would have been possible. On Iwo Jima, Marines put up a sign that read, “And when we reach the isles of Japan, with our hats at a jaunty tilt, We’ll enter the city of Tokyo, On roads that the Seabees built.” Seabees proved equally as crucial to the war efforts in Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

My wife and primary editor, Annette, is pouring over the work with an eagle eye.  Several chapters in, her most frequent criticism to date is that I have used too much of what she calls, “Seabee-ese.”  In other words, she believes that, in striving for accuracy in conversations between my characters, I have used too many acronyms, technical terms, and slang that only a fellow Seabee can understand. Going back over my text, I can see that she is right.

Here are some examples. In describing earthmovers, I used the standard designations, TD-6 and TS-24, etc. The TD stands for, “tractor-dozer, ” TS for “tractor-scraper.” Every Seabee would recognize this immediately. Likewise, all Seabees would understand the designation of characters by their position in the battalion organization, such as “ALPHA-6” for the company commander of A Company, the horizontal construction force, or “S-3” for the Operations Officer.  While this is actually the way that Seabees talk, use of such terms without explanation or in narrative passages can be very confusing to other readers. 

An author must continually keep the target audience in mind. My target audience for Asphalt and Blood is not only Seabees everywhere and of all ages but also the general military fiction readers of my first two works, Fall Eagle One and Hold Back the Sun.  Sometimes, precise technical accuracy must give way to the ability of general readership to quickly grasp the story.  The key editing question, “Does this move the story forward,” must be kept continually in mind.

In making my first pass through the manuscript with Annette’s comments in hand, “TD-6” is becoming “bulldozer” or “dozer.”  “ALPHA-6” in narrative will be replaced by the character’s name.  Organization positions used in dialog must be carefully but succinctly explained. When I worked in the Pentagon, all documents had to be subjected to what was called, “the idiot test.” The question, “could anyone from the general population be able to understand what the document was trying to convey” had to receive a positive answer. I’m sure that a new name applies now because of “political correctness,” but the gist remains the same. If readers become bogged down with confusion over words, they will likely lose interest and stop reading. The author has failed.

All this brings up another related question, “Can an author be too close to his/her subject?” When the author is closely and emotionally invested in the story, especially when writing about personal experiences, the tendency to make it “just like it actually happened” can be very powerful. When writing fiction, these urges must be subordinated to clearly relating the story. The reader must be stimulated to anticipate every page turn to learn what comes next.

Re-writing and editing takes discipline that every author must learn to become successful. In most cases, the use of a professional editor may be necessary. I know that Fall Eagle One, my debut novel, is immeasurably better because of a professional editor. It’s becoming clear that Asphalt and Blood could benefit from similar treatment. I still have a lot of work to do.

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with two novels for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com. Both are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One taking place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sun set in the war in the Pacific. 

Sharpening My Perspective on the Vietnam War

During the past few weeks, I have been plugging away on my new novel, Asphalt and Blood: U.S. Navy Seabees in the Battle for Hue City.  Although I’m depending heavily on my notes I took while I was there in the 1960s and interviews with other Seabee veterans, I also remain alert for new material from other sources. I recently found some excellent material on a media I’ve told my readers before not to trust: my television set.

While casting about for anything worthwhile in a barren wasteland last Monday evening, I stumbled onto a pair of Vietnam War shows on the Military Channel.  The American Heroes Channel, a group previously unknown to me, produced both programs. The first revealed newly discovered combat film taken during the Battle of Dak To. The horrors of jungle combat with the superbly equipped, highly professional North Vietnamese Army (NVA) were presented in all their raw detail.  Soldiers were seen being shot and blown apart with mortar bombs exactly as it happened. This was not reenactment. It was taken live during the battle. Combat cameramen went right in with the infantry as they penetrated triple canopy jungle to assault hilltop positions. The program drove home to me that Vietnam was not a homogenized war. It was a number of different wars being fought simultaneously, details depending on terrain and environment. Our troops had widely varying experiences according to where they fought.  When writing about Vietnam, an author must be sure to describe the right war for the geographical setting.

The second show I watched was called Against the Odds and covered the first half of the Battle for Hue City in 1968. I decided to watch the program to refresh my memories of Hue and its surroundings. I was soon struck by how accurate the producers got this one. For the first time I have seen on American television, the Hue battle was portrayed for what it was, a victorious fight against impossible odds by a few half-strength companies of U.S. Marines. During the Tet holiday celebrations, the NVA slipped nine regiments of highly trained troops inside Hue, seizing three fourths of the city overnight. The Marines at Camp Eagle in nearby Phu Bai had no concept of the enemy’s strength. Responding to calls for help from the besieged Military Assistance Command (MACV) compound in South Hue, a force of less that a company of Marines was originally dispatched. This group was heavily engaged by the NVA soon after entering Hue. Calls for reinforcements brought a few more small companies, and the Marines finally reached MACV.

As the overwhelming strength of the NVA became apparent through “reconnaissance in force,“ more individual Marine companies were fed into the battle. They still were unaware that the odds were about 100 to one against them. And this was not the sort of war for which they had been trained. In 1968, Counter-insurgency was the style of fighting American troops expected.  A few Marine captains soon realized that they now had to fight a battle more akin to that in Stalingrad in World War II, street-to-street, house-to-house, room-by-room. Amazingly, the young Marines quickly adapted and began to win these battles in microcosm. They were Americans and had been brought up to think for themselves. They were Marines, a band-of-brothers fiercely loyal to each other and to the Corps. And as one Hue veteran so aptly stated, “There is no fighting machine in the world as destructive as a pissed-off nineteen-year-old Marine.” And so they persevered, although many of them were walking wounded. One wounded captain continued fighting until he collapsed. His men brought him a wounded chaplain, who administered last rites. The captain’s dying words were, “God, please take care of my Marines.” Amazingly, these few hundred kids finishing clearing South Hue to the Perfume River, then boarded landing craft to cross to the north bank. 

Against the Odds closes at this point. The battle for the Hue Citadel was an equally amazing story. These were Nineteenth Century French-designed fortifications of stone blocks and brick enclosing tightly packed residential areas, the former emperor’s compound, and shrines. One paramount fact that the TV program omitted was that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) 1^st Division held onto their fortress in the northern corner of the city.  Again, a few companies of Marines entered the walls through the 1^st Division compound and fought another house-to-house battle to evict literally regiments of NVA. It was said of the Marines in the Battle of Iwo Jima that, “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.” No less was true of the young Marines at Hue City. One of the tragedies of the Vietnam War was that their accomplishments were not properly recognized at the time. In fact, a large segment of the media ridiculed the battle, arguing that the time it took to retake Hue revealed American ineffectiveness. Such slanted reporting caused many of us that were then “in-country” to lose trust in the veracity of the media.

The Battle for Hue City is central to Asphalt and Blood. My story relates how U.S. Navy Seabees worked alongside the Marines, sharing their familiarity with the city, bridging canals and providing other essential construction support. I hope veterans consider my novel to be as accurate as I found Against the Odds.

Photo Caption: Flagtower Citadel of Huế with NVA flag flying.

Photo Credit: By Arabsalam (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with two novels released and for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com. Both are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One taking place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sun set in the war in the Pacific.