Seabee History: Southeast Asia

Beginning in 1964 the United States military buildup in South Vietnam interrupted the normal peacetime deployment pattern of the Naval Construction Force. The Seabees were slated to play an important and historic role in the growing Southeast Asian conflict. By autumn of 1968, when Vietnamese requirements reached their peak, world-wide Seabee strength had grown to more than 26,000 men, serving in 21 full-strength Naval Mobile Construction Battalions, 2 Construction Battalion Maintenance Units, and 2 Amphibious Construction Battalions.

U.S. Navy and Seabee activity in Southeast Asia, however, long predated the Vietnam War. In fact, the first U.S. Navy involvement in Vietnam took place as early as May 1846. In that year, the USS Constitution, while on a world cruise, anchored in Danang Bay to take on water and foodstuffs. While there, Captain John Percival, USN, the Constitution's skipper, received a request for assistance from Bishop Dominique Lefevre who had been imprisoned and condemned to death by Thieu Tri, Emperor of Cochin China.

In response to the bishop's plea for help, Captain Percival led a rescue party of 80 sailors and marines ashore. After seizing three Mandarins as hostages, he quickly dispatched a letter to the Emperor demanding the release of Lefevre. The message either went unheeded or undelivered, because a reply was never received. Deciding on an alternative course of action, Percival released the three Mandarins when they steadfastly promised that they would personally seek Lefevre's release. Still later, after hearing no more from the Mandarins and fearing that he had been tricked, Captain Percival set sail for Macao, where, nine days later, he apprised the French authorities of Lefevre's plight. A warship was promptly dispatched and, as a result, Bishop Lefevre was finally rescued. Thus, the story of the first United States intervention in Vietnam ended happily.

The second instance of significant of U.S. Naval activity in Vietnam took place 108 years later and, this time, the Seabees were prominent participants. The 1954 Geneva agreements, which recognized the North Vietnamese communist government of Ho Chi Minh, also contained a provision which gave the Vietnamese populace an opportunity to choose whether they would live in the north or the south of a country newly divided roughly at the 17th parallel. Prior to 18 May 1955, the expiration date of this provision, nearly 800,000 Vietnamese emigrated from north to south. Their exodus, in which four nations participated, has since come to be known as the "Passage to Freedom." During the mass migration, the South Vietnamese government built reception centers and provided basic amenities, the French supplied ships and planes, and the British provided an aircraft carrier. For its part, the United States organized Navy Task Force 90, comprising more than 50 ships. Through the concerted effort of these four governments, 310,000 refugees were evacuated from North Vietnam. In addition, 68,857 tons of military equipment and 8,135 military vehicles which, furnished to France under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program, were kept from North Vietnamese hands.

As members of Task Force 90, Amphibious Construction Battalions One and Two took part in the "Passage to Freedom." In Danang, where the USS Consititution had stopped more than a century before, a detachment from Amphibious Construction Battalion One built and operated a recreation facility for U.S. personnel involved in the ferrying operation. Another detachment from the same battalion constructed a refugee tent camp and accompanying water and power supply facilities at the mouth of the Saigon River. This Seabee-built camp served as a reserve living area for the overflow of refugees from Saigon. Since the Geneva accord specifically prohibited the landing of foreign military units or the establishment of foreign military installations in French Indo-China, the Seabees of this detachment were required to wear civilian clothes and to remove all U.S. markings from their equipment. Nevertheless, as a result of their humanitarian efforts, the Seabees of Amphibious Construction Battalion One were awarded the Vietnamese Presidential Unit Citation. Detachments from Amphibious Construction Battalion Two were originally scheduled to build a causeway across the beaches adjacent to the North Vietnamese city of Haiphong. Over this causeway military equipment and refugees were to be transferred to the many ships lying offshore. The plan, however, was soon abandoned because of French opposition and the later discovery that the previously selected beaches were unsuitable for such a causeway. Instead, all loading operations were carried out from the Haiphong waterfront, and the Seabees were diverted to the south to help their comrades with the construction of the massive refugee camp. The Seabees labored for about one month in Vietnam and, before being relieved, made an important contribution to the success of this historic "Passage to Freedom."

Two years later, Seabees were to visit Vietnam one more time before the conflagration of the 1960s. During the summer of 1956, a team from a Seabee construction battalion was sent to the newly- established Republic of Vietnam to conduct a survey of some 1,800 miles of existing and proposed roads. Two solid months of seven-day-a-week labor in extremely rough territory yielded valuable results.

When the Seabees returned almost ten years later, these results helped them build many of the roads that were then crucial to the conduct of the war.

As tension continued to mount in Southeast Asia during the 1960s, the Seabees first returned in the form of thirteen-man Seabee Teams, capable of performing a great variety of tasks. Although small in size, these units possessed unique capabilities never before assembled in such compact but highly effective and versatile packages.

In 1963 Seabee Teams were sent to Thailand to assist in the Royal Thai Government's Accelerated Rural Development Program. In the northern provinces these diversified units taught and advised local Thais in an effort to help them form the cadre of essential rural public works organizations. Three years of diligent work in this region was finally concluded in May 1966.

In early November 1966, the Seabee Team program in Thailand shifted from rural development to the Thai Border Patrol Police Program for the development of remote area security. The program's underlying aim was to win village support for the government in regions continually plagued by communist insurgency. Before the termination of all Seabee Team efforts in Thailand in 1969, these skilled units had made significant progress toward the attainment of this national aim.

Also in 1963, two years before the first full Seabee battalion arrived, Seabee Teams were laboring in South Vietnam. They constructed small support points throughout the interior of South Vietnam to counter Viet Cong political influence in the villages. The teams built U.S. Army Special Forces camps, performed civic action tasks, and conducted military engineering projects under the Civil Irregular Defense Group Program.

Seabee Team activity in South Vietnam continued to grow. Generally working in remote rural areas, away from large population centers, the Seabees served throughout twenty-two provinces scattered from the Mekong Delta, along the Cambodian border and the Central highlands, to the North Vietnamese border.

In the early years, only two teams at a time were employed in these regions, but by 1969 the number of teams in-country had grown to 17.

Seabee Team accomplishments were many and varied. The U.S. Army Special Forces, who were engaged in training and advising Vietnamese Strike Forces and the Civilian Irregular Defense Group in anti-guerilla fighting and defense tactics, required fortified camps in advance areas able to withstand recurring ground and mortar attacks. Besides constructing these special camps, Seabee Teams were called upon to build access roads and nearby tactical airstrips. Further, in South Vietnamese hamlets and villages, teams carried out numerous civic action projects. From training local inhabitants in basic construction skills to providing desperately needed medical assistance, the Seabees made a significant impact on the Vietnamese populace.

While they were primarily builders and instructors, Seabee Team members were sometimes directly involved in battle. Perhaps the most famous such battle occurred in June 1965 at Dong Xoai, 55 miles northeast of Saigon. When Viet Cong troops overran a Special Forces Camp containing 400 South Vietnamese and allied Asian troops, 11 men of a U.S. Army Special Forces team and nine men of Seabee Team 1104, seven of the Seabees were wounded and two killed. One of the dead was Construction Mechanic 3rd Class Marvin G. Shields, USN, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry in carrying a critically wounded man to safety and in destroying a Viet Cong machine gun emplacement at the cost of his life. Not only was Marvin Shields the first Seabee to win the nation's highest award, but he was also the first Navy man to be so decorated for action in Vietnam.

Beginning in 1970 Seabee Teams departed from South Vietnam without relief. This initiated a phase-down program which corresponded to United States troop withdrawals. Finally, on 18 April 1972, the last Seabee Team site located in Ham Tan, Binh Tuy Province, was closed. Although these unique units were physically gone, the common people of Vietnam continued to reap the benefits of their many civic action projects.

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