After Delays, Elements of Seabee Unit Reach Kuwait 3/31/2003
During the war, the Navy deployed the unit to Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides; Iroquois Point, Hawaii; Marianas Islands and Okinawa. Then, as now, the median age of personnel in all the U.S. armed forces was 19 to 20. Not the Seabees, which were stocked with skilled tradespeople. Their median age was 38. Their mission: to act as the Navy's construction work force. NMCB-7 spent the war in the Pacific, constructing base camps, runways, hospitals and island infrastructure for advancing U.S. Marine forces. Subsequent missions involved deployments to Korea, Japan and the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.
The Seebee credo is "We Build, We Fight." NMCB-7's activities since World War II illustrate this duality. The emphasis was on military work at Guantanamo Bay during the 1961 Cuban missile crisis and later in Vietnam. The unit later turned to peacetime building efforts as well, by constructing a Loran station on Guam, restoring roads and sanitation services in the Caribbean after Hurricane Georges, supplying humanitarian assistance in Haiti after the Duvalier regime fell and providing construction support for the Paralympic Games in Atlanta.