Watchlords

Had an uncle who was a Seabee. Didn’t know until a few years ago that they fought with the Marines to take beaches until they had things stabilized enough to bring ashore their construction equipment. Uncle Ned was 5’4” and the most gentle, kind man I ever met.

Dad tells me that Uncle Ned fought at Tarawa and Okinawa as well as other islands. You never would have guessed it had you met him.

Uncle Tom, a tank driver in North Africa who later volunteered for the Air Force during Korea was another story. Not a big man and I probably only met him 3-4 times but he looked fierce. Of course I was quite young the last time I saw him. Both those uncles are gone now.

https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/iwo-jima ... 00692.html

Tough battle. Seabees were a tough bunch with little protection at times from enemy fire. Without them, there would have been no air fields for bombers, no supplies off loaded.

Yep ^, the Seabee motto= We Build, We Fight

worthless trivia= Seabee is longhand for CB (Construction Battalion)

The island-hopping war in the Pacific must indeed have been among the most intense infantry fights of second WW. I do suggest this book (which was also recommended by MAX:

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
E.B. Sledge

Sledge did "skip" Iwo Jima, but served as a Marine on Peleliu and Okinawa, and both are likely comparable to Iwo Jima. Apart from "hands on" accounts from Stalingrad (in the fight for the Tractor Plant) as well as some of the stuff that happened in the trenches of WW I, these were the most impressive write-up on modern warfare which I have read.

^^^Have that one. Intense is an understatement