We were on vacation in western NY recently. We’re having dinner in the inn’s restaurant and I hear some verbal byplay between a server and a customer wherein the server mentions that he did a hitch in the Marines. The customer pipes up with “I served 23 years in the Air Force as a civil engineer!”
This caught my attention, as I retired with 23 years in the Navy Seabees, which also has an officer cadre of engineers. So I turned around and mentioned that we had the same longevity. He says again:
He: I was a civil engineer in the Air Force!
Me: Oh, were you with Red Horse?
He: (looks a bit confused) Umm. . .I might have been. Yeah, I think I was!
Me: I did my time in the Navy.
He: My nephew was on an aircraft carrier.
Me: Well, I was never on board a ship, because I was a Seabee.
(He looks totally lost and smiles vaguely.)
Me: Naval construction force. . .?
He: (mumbles something and turns to his wife)
Two things make me think this guy was selling a line of bullshit.
Nobody who has actually spent time in the service forgets what units he/she was attached to, or is ignorant of other units. If this guy was a CE, then he would have either been attached to Red Horse in some capacity, or have been keenly aware of their existence.
Anyone who has served a career in the military knows who and what the Seabees are.
Either this guy is suffering from very early Alzheimer’s onset, or he’s just another poseur.
I’m reminded of one of my brother’s friends who would talk about his time in the Navy, until it came out that he never finished boot camp. He was supposed to go to Electrician’s Mate “A” school, but they discovered he was colorblind, so he was booted from boot. Kinda pathetic to inflate a few weeks of recruit training into a tour of duty.
Here’s an amusing coincidence. When I joined, I was designated as Group 8, which is construction trades. The only two openings they had when I got to boot were as an electrician or a plumber. I told the guy that I was colorblind and he says “Ah, that doesn’t matter.”! In retrospect, I don’t think I would have been happy as a turd chaser, and the color perception problems I have never made any difference.
I agree with your inference that this guy wasn’t in the military. But I don’t think he was a civil engineer, either. I’m a mechanical engineer who has never served in the military, and even I know the Seabees are the navy’s civil engineering/construction group. I can’t imagine an American civil engineer not knowing that, whether ex-military or not.
I don’t know why I should know who the Seabees were. Working for a state DOT doesn’t put you in contact with the Navy at all, other than making sure the Coast Guard knew about projects on bridges over navigable waters. I’d have a better shot if they called themselves the SeaEees (for CEs).
No biggie. If you weren’t in the service or you haven’t seen the 1944 movie The Fighting Seabees where John Wayne uses a bulldozer to attack the Japanese then you may not have noticed any other mention of them.
BTW: SeaBee comes from CB - Construction Battalion
Wasn’t in the service and haven’t seen any John Wayne movies, but I’ve certainly heard of the Seabees. ISTM they had a prominent role in the success of the Allied effort during WW2, and were mentioned in history lessons about that war.
I didn’t say he couldn’t have heard of it, but a lot of people could miss the rare mention of it in modern times, and a lot of people have forgotten everything they learned about history, often right after the class is over. I happen to also recall one of the characters in the comic strip Gasoline Alley enlisted in the Seabees, and I’ve heard mention of the group in the news about modern conflicts, but I still wouldn’t expect that many people to have noticed. My younger brother is a Civil Engineer and I wouldn’t just assume he had heard of the Seabees.
I never was in a history class that covered WWII, at best we’d get up to WWI before the end of the school year.
