Posted on 10/16/2005 10:47:48 PM PDT by snippy_about_it
Excellent read and another topic that could only be learned in the Foxhole.
God bless . . .
If you get a chance, read "Those Damned Engineers". HArd book to find.
As long as there have been armies, engineers have provided critical support with both construction and demolition.
Beside the Dead Sea in Israel, one can still climb to the mountain redoubt of Masada, where Jewish Zealots made their last stand against Rome in AD 73, and when their fortress was at last breached, chose death over surrender. The fortress still stands as an Israeli monument to the spirit of its defenders.
Alongside the mountain stands another monument in the form of an earthen ramp built by engineers of Roman Legio X--with the help of thousands of laboring prisoners--to allow siege equipment and troops to reach the heights and breach the walls. From the Romans' perspective, the suicide pact at Masada was of secondary importance to their demonstrating to all within the empire that nobody who challenged Rome would escape reprisal. On a more universal military note, the ramp and the remains of the Roman camps beside Masada are among the oldest monuments to a branch of service that has often made the difference between victory and defeat--the engineers.
This issue of Military History includes two articles that deal with engineers. The "Weaponry" department gives a thumbnail history of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has left behind a few lasting legacies of its own, including the Alcan Highway and the Panama Canal. The interview focuses on their U.S. Navy cousins, the construction battalions--which my father and a good many other Seabee veterans will undoubtedly greet with cries of "It's about time!"
When Paul Guttman enlisted in the Navy in 1942, the recruiter spoke glowingly of a newly formed elite unit called the Seabees. "That sounds great," Dad said. "What do they do?"
The recruiter hadn't the foggiest idea. "But they're the Seabees," he insisted, as if the very name should speak for them. Hardly the first or last recruit to succumb to a good song and dance, Dad signed up. During the next two years, he saw the Seabees perform feats throughout the Pacific that would ensure that in the future, their very name would speak for them.
"At Camp Bradford, the amphibious Marine base at Little Creek, Va., I took my training," Dad recalled, "and I was in an eight-man tent." There were also Marines at the base, mostly teenagers, their heads shaved nearly bald, and they referred to Guttman--then 22 years old--as the "Old Man." Most of the Seabees, in contrast, were men of the world, at least five years Dad's senior. "Some were in their 50s or even 60s," he recalled, "and these guys all called me 'Kid.'"
Trained as a camouflage specialist, Dad entered combat with the 59th Construction Battalion, but by early 1944 he had taken on a new task as a combat photographer. Whenever he was assigned to an island, however, Dad sought out the Seabees. "If I wanted a good night's sleep or a good meal or a shower or some booze, they were the guys to hook up with. They were the greatest dog-robbers in the world. They'd rig a windmill to work a pump to provide hot and cold running water. They'd steal inner tubes from trucks, cut them into strips and stretch them across a framework to make a pretty good mattress. There was always someone from West Virginia who knew how to build a still--practically anything that fermented would go into it."
Beside those prosaic accomplishments, the Seabees left behind monuments throughout the Pacific in the form of bases, installations and airfields, including the mammoth Boeing B-29 air base on Tinian. They could also fight when they had to--and their underwater demolition teams, which saved many a Marine landing from slaughter by eliminating countless beach obstacles, later evolved into the sea-air-land or "Seal" teams of today.
As for the Seabees' U.S. Army engineer colleagues' ability to be destructive as well as creative, arguably the best testimonial came during the Battle of the Bulge on December 18, 1944, when German SS Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper's armored spearhead closed on Trois-Ponts, only to see its bridges--and his hopes of driving on to Liège and Antwerp--blow up in his face one by one. Peiper was heard to mutter, "Those damned engineers!" The 291st Combat Engineer Battalion, to be exact.
Add their names, and many more, to the men who built the castles and forts, and the sappers who devised ways to penetrate them. From the Persians who laid a pontoon bridge across the Hellespont for King Xerxes, to the Viet Cong who dug their underground tunnel complex right under the U.S. base at Cu Chi; from Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban to Thaddeusz Kosciuszko to Captain Robert E. Lee (during the Mexican War in 1847), engineers have played a role in warfare that is too often taken for granted by other fighting men, who might often have quipped, like wartime cartoonist Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe: "Yer lucky--yer learnin' a trade."
IIRC, The hull of one of the battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor was used to build a dock.
:-)
Thank you Don W. You are very sweet and kind.
Well you don't have to get snippy about it! LOL. You poor thing. I wake up like this lots of mornings. Grrrr.
Good morning Iris. Trying to get any job done while trying to stay alive in a war zone has got to be tough.
Good morning EGC.
Thanks alfa6. I've got to head out of here too. I'll check back in when I get to work.
We took our dog out to the lake yesterday. He had a great time. He really loves the water.
We've had to take him off of the bones last week. He'd been having problems digesting some food. Vets recmommend not giving dogs bones.
Weather's been nice here. Storms in the forecast for later this week.
This issue of Military History includes two articles that deal with engineers. The "Weaponry" department gives a thumbnail history of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The latest issue?
In some book somewhere in my dusty collection of tomes, there is a pic from the Korean War where either the Seabees or Army Corps of Engineers used a 'sunk previously' freighter as a harbor expedient jetty to build on.
Now I just have to find the book!
Also has pics of pilots whose helmets barely stopped rifle rounds (Mustang pilots in Korea early on, double layer K-Pot style helmet) and one guy stuck a cleaning rod straight through the holes.
Going through a photo album, I discovered he had been in Korea during that war. His uniform colar had LT bars and one of these:
After that Msdrby pulled a display case out of the closet which had a bunch of pins, devices etc. all surrounding one of these:
I'm sensing some interesting family history here. ;-)
hi miss Feather
Bittygirl has been up to about 100.5. She has some kind of cold or virus. ;-(
Good morning Gail. How's the dating going?
Oh shoot, so sorry!!
HUGS to Bittygirl.
Good morning tex. You're welcome.
Oops I sent too fast.
Yesterday BG fell asleep during breakfast. She was eating freedom toast with syrup. When I woke her up, her cheek and hair was stuck to the plate. She was less than happy.
Thank you Mayor.
Ewwwwwwwwww, poor tiker. She has my sympathy.
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