Can Do!: The Story of the Seabees

When William Bradford Huie, a reporter for H. L. Mencken's American Mercury, joined the U.S. Navy in 1943, he received a commission as a public relations officer in the little-known Civil Engineer Corps' Construction Battalions - the Seabees - and the following year published this account of their landing with the Marines at Guadalcanal and Wake Island, Sicily and Salerno. As readable and entertaining today as it was some fifty years ago, it tells the story of these civilian engineers, carpenters, steam-shovel operators, plumbers, truck drivers, surveyors, and the like, who landed with the first waves of American assault troops, not only in the Pacific but also in Europe and Africa, bringing heavy equipment ashore to build roads, bridges, and airfields and repairing whatever they could. Often working under enemy fire, they incurred many casualties and won the deep respect of everyone who came into contact with them.