[00:00:00] (HOST) When you look at images from the war in Vietnam, you notice a lot of things. You notice young men, extremely young men, in some cases looking like warriors. You notice jungles and rice paddies and helicopters and M16s and jeeps. You notice nurses and USO shows and barbed wire and sandbags. But there are things in many, if not most of those images that you might not notice. You might not notice, for instance, the infrastructure of our armed forces, the roads, the observation towers, the Quonset Huts. You might not notice the bridges, the helipads, the water tanks. All of these things were essential to fighting at scale in Vietnam. And more often than not, they were put there by men with tools in one hand and weapons in the other. These are the Seabees of the US Navy. The name Seabees is taken from the initials C-B-, which stands for Construction Battalion, 10,000 Seabees were with the Marines who went across the beach at Chu Lai in May of 1965, and during the peak of the Vietnam conflict, there were 25,000 of them in 22 battalions, 2 regiments, 2 maintenance units and scores of civic action teams trained for combat as well as construction. Seabees frequently found themselves in the thick of the fighting, and they often distinguished themselves with their heroism. There are 85 Seabees memorialized on The Wall, including one Medal of Honor recipient.

[00:01:31] (HOST) In this episode, we bring you conversations with two Seabees who served in Vietnam, including one who pioneered the underwater construction techniques still in use by Seabees today. Stick around. From the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Founders of The Wall. This is Echoes of the Vietnam War. I’m your host, Michael Croan bringing you stories of service, sacrifice and healing from people who still feel the impact of that conflict, more than 50 years later. Episode 69 We Build, We Fight, right after this.

[00:04:26] (HOST) Our first guest described the Seabees to me this way. He said a Seabee is a soldier in a sailor’s uniform with Marine Corps training, doing civilians work at government wages.

[00:04:38] (GEIBEL) I was with the Navy Seabees in Vietnam. The Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 11, and I was there on three different tours with the battalion.

[00:04:49] (HOST) That’s Bruce Geibel. He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1991 after 29 years of service. He joined me by phone from his home in Canton, Georgia.

[00:05:00] (GEIBEL) It started out with him in training in California on the 26th of June,1966. I departed, Port Hueneme for Vietnam. The battalion was already overseas in Danang, East Vietnam in 1966. We came back home from that deployment in October, November time frame of that year. I deployed a second tour in 1967 as officer in charge of Seabee Team 1109, part of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 11, and we were stationed in unknown, Thailand, where I was working with a 13-man Seabee team, working with the Thai Border Patrol police. I returned from that tour in November of that year, having deployed over there to Thailand, and in April of that year I went back to Vietnam with the battalion a third time in Quang Tri, Vietnam. I was there from, April to September of 1966. I left Vietnam. I was offered a full Navy, the US Navy rather than reserve at that time. And that began, the rest of my active-duty career. I retired as a captain in September of 1991. Seabees, or the Naval Construction Force Seabees, comes from the initial Construction Battalion. C-B The a guy turned that into a C like SCA being at C and B, because we’re always kind of like busy as bees. So that’s where the acronym Seabees came from. And a Seabee does all kinds of construction. We do it for the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines, sometimes the Coast Guard. We do it overseas. During World War Two, the Seabees did work for the Marines, primarily in the South Pacific on islands out there. They also did work with other armed forces, including the US Army on D-Day, and liberation of several of the countries over there and marching across the Rhine River. We set up pontoon bridges across the Rhine River there so the army folks could take their tanks across into Germany from Luxembourg. So that’s a little bit about what the Seabees are.

[00:07:46] (HOST) Yeah. Building and fighting.

[00:07:49] (GEIBEL) Construimus, Batuimus. We build, we fight. Going back to World War II, there were a bunch of civilians doing construction work all over the South Pacific and all the islands out there, you know, from Guam to Philippines those islands out there. But civilians are, were unarmed, and they didn’t have any way to protect themselves. When the Japanese came ashore, they took them as prisoners of war. Many of them they executed or shot or were killed when they invaded the islands out there. And so the US Navy began to recognize the need for armed construction people out there to continue to do work. Seabees are construction personnel. They come from the Navy’s Group 8 ratings, and the ratings include: steelworkers, builders, equipment operators, construction mechanics, construction electricians, engineering aides and utilities men. They come from all the, all the different types of building trades.

[00:09:03] (HOST) Mhm. And that motto we build, we fight is represented by the mascot of the Seabees. Can you describe that?

[00:09:16] (GEIBEL) Yeah. The Seabee mascot is built like a bee. You have the arm appendages there and one holds a hammer. The other one holds a Tommy gun at the front, and they have a CB radio on the side to show they’re part of a military organization, but the hammer basically implying we build, the Tommy gun in the front, indicating we fight. So not only do we build things, but we’re capable of defending the sites that we build.

[00:09:48] (HOST) Yeah. So let’s break that down a little bit. Let’s start with building. Can you give some examples of the kinds of things that Seebees would have been building in Vietnam?

[00:10:03] (GEIBEL) Seabees do vertical work, which is building buildings and facilities that go in the air, and they do horizontal work, and that will be road work along the plane of the ground there. So we do that type of thing but the things we would build would include things like roads and bridges, piers, hospitals. We would do chapels, for religious things. We build barracks to be able to house the military troops. We build dining halls and galleys to feed them. We build storage facilities and warehouses to house, the materials, the construction materials, and even the foods that we eat in warehouses. We do simple things like build a movie screen so you can show a movie or build an amphitheater so they can have an outdoor movie theater amphitheater there with maybe a USO show, come in to do a show on the stage. Or we can do observation towers where they can put platforms up in the air, steel or wood, up maybe 40 feet in the air so that they can look out fields of fire and be able to see any oncoming enemy forces. We also build ammunition supply points where we can bury our ammunition between bunkers and down in holes there to protect it from getting hit. They build helicopter pads. A lot of the work we did out there, we had to go to remote sites, and the only way to get out to some of these, where the Army and the Marines were, was to go out by helicopter. So we built helicopter pads and protected so they could come in, pick up supplies and, and Seabees to take them out to these work sites to do the construction out there. We built petroleum oil and lubrication tanks. Great big tanks, 10,000-barrel tanks that can build showers and bathroom facilities, all types of related infrastructure. And besides that, we work with the local villagers and many, many villages and we did civic action work for them. We could help them hand dig wells. We could help them plow things up to be able to make a garden. We could help them build a dispensary, to be able to take care of their sick and ill. We could help them build a schoolhouse so they could train their kids. We could help them build roads out to the village so the villagers could take their wares, maybe vegetables they wanted to sell, or things they made out to the local village and be able to sell it, to make money, to buy things there, to take back to the village. So we did all kinds of things like that for both the villagers and military units we supported.

[00:12:36] (HOST) Yeah. That’s amazing. I mean, basically anything required for victory that wasn’t already there the Seabees built.

[00:12:44] (GEIBEL) Absolutely. And if things were there, maybe damaged or destroyed or built up, we would help them rebuild. Rebuild those facilities and infrastructure so they could work again.

[00:12:55] (HOST) Yeah. So let’s talk about the fighting side. My understanding is that, you know, Seabees saw a lot of action, but most of that probably would have been defending the areas where they were trying to work if that area was under attack. Is that fair to say?

[00:13:15] (GEIBEL) That is correct. But it was all about teamwork, being able to work together, being able to do construction, have your weapons nearby. So if you came under attack, you could get in a foxhole and be prepared to defend that position. It was about teamwork. It wasn’t about one person doing one thing. It was about six people working together to have overwhelming. Construction support, as well as overwhelming defense against people who may be attacking you there. Teamwork.

[00:13:46] (HOST) Bruce, when you when you visit The Wall, are there any particular names that you look for?

[00:13:54] (GEIBEL) One was a Seabee that worked on my Seabee Team, Charles Jones. He was on my Seabee team in Thailand. He went back to join our battalion and then later on, he came back with another battalion. Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 5 on a follow up tour, you know not unlikely for Seabees to go back to Vietnam many, many times. He stepped on a mine and was injured with the battalion in 19, I think it was, 1969. He was injured, and five days later he died from his wounds there. His name is on The Wall.

[00:14:46] (HOST) Is there anything that we haven’t talked about regarding the Seabees or your experience in Vietnam that you think is important for our listeners to understand?

[00:14:56] (GEIBEL) I think one thing I’d like to call everybody’s attention and anybody in the Seabees now would know the name Marvin Shields. He was a Seabee on CB Team 1104 that was deployed to Vietnam out of our battalion, NMCB 11 back in 1965 and he was a hero in that battalion. He was the first and only Medal of Honor winner, although he got it posthumously. He won the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions there with the Navy, with an Army Green Beret, a first lieutenant who was the acting in charge of a Green Parade team. That CB team, 1104 was working with. And you know, what they did was just amazing. And the lieutenant with the Green Berets also won the Medal of Honor, but he got his from the president. The wife got Marvin Shields posthumously there from the president of Washington, DC back in 19 and 66.

[00:16:08] (HOST) After a short break, I’ll talk with Chuck Waddell, who joined the Navy at 16, became the first enlisted man assigned to a diving billet in the Seabees, pioneered underwater construction in the Navy, and went on to write a memoir called Farm Boy Can’t Swim. Stick around.

[00:18:03] (CHUCK) My mother passed away when I was 14 years old, and I had a father, never around. And, I had a brother that was in the Navy and a nephew that had joined the Navy. And then I decided it was time for me to go do something. So I joined the United States Navy when I was 16 years old.

[00:18:24] (HOST) That’s Chuck Waddell, a former Seabee and author of the book Farm Boy Can’t Swim. He joined me via Zoom from his home in southern Utah.

[00:18:33] (CHUCK) And people asked me how I did that, being 16. Well, you have to have your parents sign for you. And I told my Navy recruiter, mom’s passed away and dad’s an alcoholic. You might go up north to Spokane and find him, and he can sign the papers. And, of course, the Navy recruiter never did find my dad. He signed the papers, and I went in the Navy. I had a good Navy recruiter at 16.

[00:18:58] (HOST) So you hadn’t even finished high school yet?

[00:19:00] (CHUCK) No, sir. I dropped out. I worked on different farms for a couple of years until I turned 16. And, that’s when I joined the Navy. And it was the best decision I ever made in my life was to join the Navy and make a career of it. And when I went into the recruiter, I said, sign me up for 20 years. And he said, I can’t do it, but I was ready to go for 20 years and it was the best, like I say, the best decision I ever made. And I got to travel the world.

[00:19:30] (HOST) Now, when you go into the Navy at 16 years old, right? Physically, are you are you mature like the other boys in boot camp or?

[00:19:44] Well, you know, I come from the farm community. Little town, little town called Spangle, Washington of 242 people. And we worked on the farms and ranches and stuff like that. So I feel that we’re more advanced than what the city boys are because we’re out in the fields working and milking cows and, and getting educated. And, so consequently, I at the age of 16, I weighed 150 lbs. I was a pretty good size boy, and hay and bucking bales and working like a man. We were fit fellas at that age.

[00:20:21] (HOST) Okay, okay. So what year was this that you went into the Navy?

[00:20:27] (CHUCK) I went in the Navy in June of 1960, May of 1960.

[00:20:32] (HOST) May of 1960, and where did they send you for boot camp?

[00:20:35] (CHUCK) I went to boot camp in San Diego, and then from San Diego, went to Fort Wayne. They were going to make a gunner’s mate out of me. And I said, no, I’m going to be a Seabee, because that’s all I ever do is construction equipment and stuff like that. And I’d been to trade school in Spokane for welding and everything. So, they finally were convinced that I’d be a better Seabee. So from the boot camp, I went to Port Hueneme, and then I went back down to Camp Pendleton and went through three weeks of Marine Corps Basic. And then from there we went to Guam for nine months.

[00:21:11] (HOST) And you said you wanted to be a Seabee. So even at the age of 16, you knew what a Seabee was.

[00:21:17] (CHUCK) Yes, sir, I did. I had a nephew that had joined the Seabees ahead of me, and he’s a year older than I am, and he went in and ended up on the East Coast and did his four years in one station, and that was it. And of course, I went in the Navy at 16, just a short time after him. And then my other nephew, which is a year younger than I am, he came in and he was also a Seabee. So there was it was right there together. And the family were all Seabees.

[00:21:46] (HOST) Yeah. So when you say construction battalion, can you just give a few examples of the kinds of work that Seabees would do?

[00:21:56] (CHUCK) Well, I was in Guam, for instance. I was with MCB 11. That’s Mobile Construction Battalion 11. And over there we were building concrete houses there on Guam and a swimming pool and all. And I was first assigned to the steel yard, where I was bending rebar for these concrete houses that I was doing, and I was placing the rebar in those houses all the time I was in Vietnam or in Guam.

[00:22:23] (HOST) Mhm. So you said it was 1960 and you were there for nine months?

[00:22:29] (CHUCK) Yes, sir. And then from there I come back to the States, and I was in the States for 30 days, and I went to Yokosuka, Japan when I first was there, it was public works, and then they transferred me to, ACB -1 which is Amphibious Construction Battalions. And of course, they do amphibious work on piers and pontoons and all this stuff with the amphibs. And there I was with the steel shop building, pontoons and all. And I was there for almost three years.

[00:23:06] (HOST) Yeah. So how do you get from Japan to Vietnam and when?

[00:23:10] (CHUCK) In September of 66. I come back from Japan. But I did a tour in, Port Hueneme at the military training facilities you know, tactics. And I went to NCO school in Camp Pendleton, and I was the only Navy personnel and 80 Marines in that class, and I was really harassed by the Marines, but I made it through it, and I did my tour at, NCO school and of course, at the Seabee Center, Port Hueneme in military training instructor. And then in April of that next year, MCB-10 come back from Chu Lai. And I joined MCB-10 then in 1966 and went through diving school at that year. And then I went to Vietnam and to Danang, Vietnam and Danang. I was, in charge of building steel buildings Throughout the Danang area, and also being the diver over there with the crew of divers. In all, the diving was my responsibility. One of the interesting dives I did over there in Vietnam was we had a 10,000 gallon water tank up on the hill, and the flapper valve went by bad. So the medical officer made me take the shower. They’d run me down with alcohol. I jumped into the fresh water tank, handed me my diving gear. I went down and worked on the flapper valve. I come back up and went back down to base afterwards. I had everybody that I urinated in water, but that was always a good joke. But that was a fun dive that day. But I also did some salvage work of cutting the pontoons up. The Marine Corps had, uh, swamped a river, so somebody’s boat had to go out on Benoit River and recover that boat for them. And, that kind of a story there. When we pulled into the camp there, I hate to say that, but they greeted us in a fancy way with two Vietcong heads jammed on French books out there. And we got in and started diving, and we got the first half of the boat out, and it was getting late at night and raining and the water was rising. And I told the lieutenant, I said, let’s cancel this until tomorrow morning. And of course, that night the sergeant said, well, come on, go on, go on patrol with us tonight. And I said, no, that foxhole in my foxhole, that’s where I’m staying. But they had sent an ensign with me from the battalion, and he told the lieutenant, he said, we can’t be out of the camp after 1800. You have to get a helicopter and fly us back to camp. The lieutenant told our little ensign, he said, I can’t get a helicopter in here to fly my wounded out. He says, let alone fly your dumb butt out of here. So we had to spend the night out there in the woods with them, with the Marines at night. And of course, the next thing, we got the rest of that boat up for him. Stuff like that. But I dove every Sunday. I got a half a day off every Sunday, and I would go over to a place called Monkey Mountain, which later became a resort area for everybody, for R&R. But there was a beautiful place to dive over there, and I would dive for lobster, and I’d bring lobster back to the cooks first. They got the first lobsters because that got me a block of ice every day. So I’d have ice water over there.

[00:26:42] (HOST) How long were you in Vietnam?

[00:26:45] (CHUCK) I spent nine months over there. And just after I started training at the Air Force base on Hill 327. And I helped build the exchange in the big amphitheater there. And, of course, I built steel buildings, and sad story here I was building a school at unknown that was just up the road from us. And that’s where they brought the wounded in and did surgeries and stuff like that. One day I went up to work on the building and the stench and everything is so bad because they bring the bodies in and then the helicopters wouldn’t even land. They’d just drop them off. And of course, the graves registration was right there. And I had a second-class petty officer on my crew that wanted to be a mortician. And every time I turned around, Pittman was over there working with the morticians, helping them, but burning the clothes and burning the bodies and seeing all that. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to be around. And like I say, one day we went up there and it was really, really, I mean, very unbearable. And I took the crew and we went back home, and the company commander said, what are you doing here? And I said, we can’t work up there today. And they said, oh yeah, we will. I said, well, you get in the Jeep and we’re going to go for a ride. And I went up there and he said, no, you guys got the day off. So I mean, there’s that stench and you’ll never get that out of your nose. I mean, it’s horrible, but there were other things other than that were pretty bad over there that you get involved in.

[00:28:18] (HOST) Now, you’ve been in Guam. You’d been in Japan. So you’re no stranger to Asia? But was there anything about Vietnam that stuck with you? First impressions?

[00:28:28] (CHUCK) First impression was flying in and C-134? C-130s and you fly in and all of a sudden he drops his nose and he got down on the runway. And of course, there’s a few snipers there and all too. But you land on that runway just I mean, bang. And you’re there and then driving up to our camp and all the first night I was out on the rock crusher hard facing the jaws. And I am a perfect target because I got a blue light in my hand. And we got a sniper up on the hill that just welcomed you to Vietnam. So many young, 17 or 18 years old, 19 years old, somewhere in there, got hit there and have rounds coming at you. The first night is a rude awakening. I mean, from then on, you’re scared. I’m not kidding you that that first night was pretty rough.

[00:29:26] (HOST) Yeah. Yeah, it must be. I mean, I’m it must be unusual for somebody 19, 20 years old to be an NCO, you know, with that kind of responsibility.

[00:29:37] (CHUCK) You know, I can brag a little bit here. Even in boot camp, I was the assistant acting CPO of the company. From there when I got to Guam, I was in charge of the ship. Or the ship for the steelworkers yard. I’ve always been in command duty from the time I joined boot camp. it was kind of funny I was what they call wooden or world. It was a group. And was teaching marching and fly fishing and hunting and stuff like that, and was in boot camp. They said, anybody got any experience in marching? And I said, yes, I do. And that’s how I ended up being the acting chief petty officer of the company. And like I say, I’ve always been in command ever since I joined the service, I’ve been very fortunate, I guess. So being in command of the steel yard and then being in charge of the divers and in charge of my own squad during the construction work and everything else. And then when I come into the diving world, I was in charge of the diving block. So it’s always been command duty.

[00:30:41] (HOST) Mhm. Now, you mentioned earlier that underwater construction is not such an unusual thing now. Was it unusual then, for you to have the two skill sets?

[00:30:54] (CHUCK) Yes it was. I am the very first, first enlisted man that was assigned to a diving billet in the Seabees.

[00:31:02] (HOST) There was a sign to a what.

[00:31:04] (CHUCK) A diving billet. I was the first assigned to a diving bell. Now, in World War II and all that, there were CB divers working in Hawaii and stuff like that where they ordered hardhat diving and stuff like that, but they were never assigned as a diver billet.

[00:31:22] (HOST) At 16. So, you’re the first official diver in, in the Seabees.

[00:31:27] (HOST) In the Seabees, which was in April of 1970, 1967, when I joined the NCO. And when I come back from Vietnam, what I what happened was I always knew that there was going to be something going on in the under construction. So I would sneak off and go over to Naval Civil Engineering Lab at Port Hueneme and got to know the civilians over there who, uh, John Cork, who was in charge over to GS 14 and I would prefer three months there. I would sneak off and I kind of got in trouble a few times from the chief about being not where I was supposed to be, but I got to know those people. We talk about diving and what the responsibility was and stuff like that. I got a set of orders to Adak, Alaska, diving duty. I went over to John and I said, John, I got orders. I’ll be leaving in two weeks, going to Adak, Alaska. And John says, no, you’re not going to Adak, Alaska. You’re coming here. And I said, John, I don’t think you got that much pull. And he says, watch and the phone started going and the letter started going. And two weeks later I had a set of orders to NCL diver duty. So, that started my career in a really big way in diving. I ended up going to first class school Saturation schools, salvage schools and all. And running the diving locker there at Port Hueneme.

[00:33:05] (HOST) I want to come back to that because I want to hear more about those schools. But, before we leave Vietnam, you said you were there for nine months. Did you spend the entire nine months in and around Danang?

[00:33:18] (CHUCK) In and around Danang and Ben Hai River was my first excursion out, helping the Marines get that boat. But my time was all around Danang and Red Beach, out at Monkey Mountain and all that area there. I built a total of five buildings over there. Interesting there is we didn’t have enough concrete finishers to finish concrete and everything else to do these steel buildings. So, I convinced the company commander to let me train my boys on setting forms and finishing concrete and all, and I had a little experience because my dad did a lot of concrete work and all. And so consequently they said, go ahead. So it ended up from then on, I had my own concrete finishers. And we put our own concrete standard building and everything else myself. And I was working on one for 3rd Marine Corps and it was a financial facility. They had a big safe going in and stuff like that. And it was kind of raining one morning. It was pouring concrete and one of the transformers was sliding in the ditch. And I didn’t want to lose that cement truck, cause we only had five of them. We couldn’t afford to lose another truck. So the 3rd Marines were up on the hill from us where we was working and I went up over the hill and I went into their pool of dozers, and I jumped on a dozer with a P-25 on the back of it. And I went out to the main gate with it and I said, hey, Sergeant Peter said I could use this. We got a problem over the hill there. The guard let me out with that dozer. I went down, hooked onto that transformation, keep it from tipping over and dumping the concrete out of it. I want to save the truck. And I sent word back to the company commander, who was unknown name, that I needed him and the wrecker out there because the engineers showed up. Then the Marines, they kind of convinced him that they could see that concrete. And I had to tell that engine, you make a written direct order, otherwise I’m going to dump this concrete. And I dumped the concrete and I went, Lieutenant got there. I told him, I said, that engine said I had to save that concrete for the Marines and I had a little spat with him. And the lieutenant went over and told that answer and said, you get out of here and don’t come back and back me up on saving that cement truck. But I did a lot of what? Grand larceny on the outside, but [unknown word] on the inside. Being the chief, you have to learn how to [unknown word] and get things done. So that was the biggest piece of equipment I ever stole.

[00:35:56] (HOST) When your time drew short, you were getting ready to leave Vietnam. Did that change your, do you feel like you were different in terms of your attitude or how you approached the job?

[00:36:08] (CHUCK) Well, here again, I remember I got injured on the job when I was doing work for the Air Force base. My right arm was cut pretty bad and I couldn’t use it at all. And I was running around for the last two months not knowing what I was going to do or anything else they wanted to send me to. I said, no, I’m gonna stay here because we had a good medical facility, and the guys down at the shop made me a sling for my wrist and everything else. And I finally went into the executive officer and I said, Commander Weir I said, why don’t you let me take over special services? And they gives me something to do. I can I can pass out the equipment on Sundays or do stuff. So it went down and there was E-7, chief petty officer, who had special service, and he was invited to go back to the Delta Company. And I took over special services. So it was a pretty easy time for me in Vietnam. I there was a lot of things I didn’t like that that went on over there, the stealing from us and stuff like that. But I was different in the aspect is it made you grow up. You knew what war was about. You seen. You seen a lot of death and a lot of destruction. So, yeah, it changed your life. It makes you think back. I lost too many, too many friends over there.

[00:37:39] (HOST) So what is saturation school? What does that mean?

[00:37:43] (CHUCK) Saturation is where you go down into a depth, and you stay there for more than a period of time where you don’t have decompression. You can stay there for 2 or 3 days or a week and you’re saturated out. My longest dive was 300ft for nine days from the time I entered the chamber until I got out. When I went to school. I’m only one of four Seabees at the time that had ever went through saturation school, and I was at 300ft, and we were guinea pigs doing mixed gas studies, and they put a foreign gas to me, and I passed out at 300ft. And today it’s top secret. They will never tell you what kind of gas they put on me, because we were testing to see if there was other gas we could use other than helium and oxygen. And I have no idea what the gas was and I can never find out.

[00:38:40] (HOST) Mm. So I’m assuming that’s where the name comes from. Saturation refers to the gas blood gases.

[00:38:45] (CHUCK) Right. So when you can go down and stay at a depth for a number of time, like the Sealab program, you crawl into what’s called a transfer capsule. You’re lowered down to your depth. You work, you crawl back into the capsule. They bring you up. You lock back on their chambers, and you live in the chamber. And you stay saturated for the duration. And then you start your decompression. And it depends on how deep you are or how long it takes you to decompress and to get back up to the surface. Mhm.

[00:39:14] (HOST) What are some of the physical effects of, of being saturated?

[00:39:20] We’re finding out now that it affects your body in several different ways. Especially joints has been a bad thing. I’ve had both of my knees replaced now and because of the diving. And I feel also that, when I was a guinea pig with this gas is, you know, that’s probably some of the reason why my lungs are the way they are now. I have COPD awful bad, and I think that a lot of that gas was part of that. The other thing is, is hearing. You’re always punching your eardrums and pressure. And so consequently, 90% of us all hear with hearing aids before we get out of the diamond because you’re trying to equalize the pressure on it there. So there’s lots of side effects that are coming up. And we’re finding out about saturation diving too. But we’ve learned how to live with it too.

[00:40:14] (HOST) Mhm. So you said uh once you were in the Navy you made a career out of it. How long did you stay in.

[00:40:20] (CHUCK) I did over 12, almost 13 years in when I was injured on a dive in San Diego and was put out with 100% disability.

[00:40:29] (HOST) So 13 years total in the Navy?

[00:40:32] (CHUCK) Yes, sir.

[00:40:32] (HOST) Yeah. What did you do after that? I mean, you got a unique skill set, right? I mean, not too many guys can do what you do.

[00:40:40] (CHUCK) You know, I got hundreds of stories about the diving and stuff that I’ve worked on with the with the diving that I did in the Navy, the Sealab program, all of this research and development work that I did at NCL and in construction teams and all that noise. So I there’s a lot to talk about in the diving world and the things that I’ve developed back 50 years ago, they’re still using today. I went to all these schools and all this noise to become a master diver in the Navy. And fortunately, I was maybe seven, and I couldn’t become a master diver, but I’d been recommended for meritorious advancement way back when. So there’s a lot of stories to talk about here before I, talk about what I did after the service. I was there until, I went to first class school in March of 68. I went to saturation school in May of 69 and then in 69, October 69th I took a crew of divers and a lieutenant back to Davis Island. The first underwater construction team called UTCT-1.

[00:42:00] (HOST) Chuck, let me ask you a question. While you’re, you know, 17, 18, 19 years old in the Navy and you’re over in the Pacific, in the South China Sea. Do you have any idea what’s going on with your siblings?

[00:42:18] (CHUCK) The first five years that I was in, they knew that I was in the Navy, but I had no contact with anybody. For five years of my family. I had a younger sister, an older sister and her brother still alive. And like I say my dad died while I was in the service also so I, like I say, I just kind of left home because I was kind of drinking too much and running with the guys and all, and I didn’t have a chance to have anything. My dad, being an alcoholic, mother being passed away. And, you know, there was just nothing there for me. So the Navy became my family. And I went in with the attitude 20 years in and I volunteered for a lot of things because that was my life, and I had the opportunity to see a lot. I’ve got Japan. I got down into Mindoro and the Philippine Islands and Okinawa, Midway, Wake, Guam. I got to see a lot and do a lot of things. A lot of these people never get to see that kind of thing.

[00:43:26] (HOST) Yeah, yeah. What did you ever reconnect with your siblings?

[00:43:32] I did after it was a, you know, but I got home from Japan And I went and seen my sister and all, and I went back to see my grandparents and all. And it wasn’t until after I got out of the Navy before my brother and I really got to do anything, because I was working on a ranch, and I, and my was in the hospital, and I see my brother drive by and he wouldn’t even pick me up and take me up to see mom. And the gentleman that I was working for at the time had just bought a brand new 57. Or how was it? Yeah. 57 Chevy pickup. And I stole that pickup one Sunday, and I drove it to Spokane. I’m only 14 years old. I got an agricultural permit, and ten years later, dad said, Chuck, I need to talk to you about something. And I said, what’s that? He said, you stole my pickup. He knew it, but he knew where I went. He knew I went to see mom. And of course, that was the last time I seen my mother alive. But my brother and I, we wouldn’t speak for years until after I got out of the service. And then we finally kind of buried the hatchet a little bit. And of course, he’s 86 years old now and I’m 80 years old, so we better bury it then, because time is going to run out here real quick. And then, of course, I got two sisters and we see one another once in a blue moon. They’re up in Washington state and I’m down here in beautiful Cedar City, Utah. Well, after being out of the service for 50 years and a diver, I love the water. I kid you not. I love that ocean. Drop back a few years as a kid. I was about 12 years old. We went salmon fishing at Westport, and I got so seasick out there. I told the captain, you call the Coast Guard and tell them I’m dying. So I never thought I’d ever be involved in the ocean. But after I got and become a diver, I loved unknown. I loved that ocean. I mean, that is nothing but beauty. And people would never get to see what I got to see and do in the water, and consequently I had to stay away from the divers. And I did for a number of years. And a few years ago I thought, you know what, I need to go see what the divers are doing. So I went to Fort Wayne and I went to the diving locker that I built, and I walked in. There was nobody there. So I made myself at home. I just started walking through the diver locker and seeing what they’d changed and what they’d added and stuff like that. And at the time, I was dragging an oxygen bottle and I was in a walker, and I started to walk out and this chief walked in the front door and he said, can I help you? And I said, yeah. I said, I’d like to talk to somebody that works here. He says, I’m the master diver here. And he kind of stepped back and he looked at me and he says, is your name Wardell? I says, yes, sir. He says, we’ve been looking for you for a long time. He said, come with me.

[00:46:24] (HOST) So how did he wait? Why? What made him say that? What made him say is your name Wardell?

[00:46:28] (CHUCK) Well, because there was a lot of history. They didn’t have any history about the diving. Now we’re talking. We’re talking, at that time, probably 40 years. Okay. They didn’t have anything. And, they had a whole bunch of pictures, and they had. Nobody knew what it was all about. So I sat there for a couple of hours going through pictures and showing him, telling him what it was, and he’d write down all the information on it and everything else. And he said, well, the question is, you people had a pickup truck. Yeah. We did. And so I showed him a picture of it. I had it on my phone. And they they just heard about it. They’d never seen it. And it was a lot of that kind of stuff that they didn’t know. And he said, we need to go over to team two. Underwater construction team two tomorrow morning. And I said, fine, we’ll go over. I’d like to see the equipment they got now. So we get over there and we start walking around with the commanding officer and looking at all this equipment and all this noise and everything else. We ended up in the classroom with 42 divers sitting there, and the commanding officer says a few words and he said, they introduced me and I said, well, I’m not prepared for this. Well, 45 minutes later and the guy still sitting on the edge of their chairs, I had a lot of fun talking history to these people. And they said, Chuck, you need to write a book. And I said, I’m an old eighth grade dropout. I says, I got my high school education after I got out of the service. I graduated from high school in 1979. And I told them, I said, I don’t need to write a book. The guys at the diver locker got the paperwork, and that recommended me for the meritorious advancement to chief petty officer. They took that and they run to Washington, and they got it all approved and was signed by the senior chief petty officer of the United States Navy. And in Port Hueneme, California, they had me come back and I did a week’s initiation because the Navy is still initiates the chief petty officers. So I went to a week’s initiation, and then we had the ceremony on the parade ground, and it cost me $1,000 for my dress uniform and my khaki uniform. And when they piped me across there from my wife pinning me and my hat put on me and all this noise, about 500 people just erupted. And one of the happiest days of my life was getting that chief’s pretty hat put on me.

[00:48:50] (HOST) Chuck describes Southern Utah as a veteran, friendly community. There you can find monuments, memorials, and exhibits honoring those who served in every war, from World War I to Operation Iraqi Freedom. In 2017, Washington City, Utah hosted The Wall That Heals, and now a group of veterans is working to build a permanent replica of the wall in the area. It’s going to take a lot of work to get that done, including fundraising. But the Seabee’s motto is can do, will do and Chuck is among those driving the effort.

[00:49:23] (CHUCK) We’re on Interstate 15, which is those north and south from border to border. So you got hundreds of people now will have the opportunity to see the wall. They can’t afford to go to Washington to see it, but by traveling on Interstate 15, they’ll be able to stop and see this wall. And I it’s I still feel the hurt from Vietnam being called a baby killer in my house, being stolen from me while I was in Vietnam when I was in Vietnam in July the real estate company that I bought my house from in Oxnard, California, they used a quitclaim deed and signed it and stole my house. And I come home from Vietnam on emergency leave. I lost my house. I lost all my equity. I never got my house back because I couldn’t even get a lawyer.

[00:50:11] (HOST) How were they able to do that?

[00:50:13] (CHUCK) When I bought my house, I signed a quitclaim deed blank and didn’t know it, and they used it in July. What really hung them was I was in Vietnam in July when they signed it. They took that signed document and filed it and took my house away from me. But I come home to get it back and I couldn’t get a lawyer to help me. It cost. When I lost that house, I lost all the equity. They moved my wife out of there and she moved into an apartment house.

[00:50:37] (HOST) Your wife was living in the house at the time.

[00:50:39] (CHUCK) My wife was living in the house. They forced her out of the house, and she moved into a rent an apartment, and I couldn’t get anybody to help me. That’s how bad it was back in them days. You can’t realize.

[00:50:52] (HOST) You couldn’t get anyone to help you. You couldn’t get a lawyer to help you. You believe because of your service in Vietnam?

[00:50:58] (CHUCK) Yes, that’s exactly right. You couldn’t get anybody to help you. I went back to Vietnam and I was there for seven days. I went back to Vietnam and lost my house. Okay. And then. That was. That was one of the things that really hurt me more about it than Vietnam was. You got spit on when you come in, you. You got tormented and you lost your house and nobody helps you. So I have a lot of hurt, but I want the veterans to be honored and know we can honor these people is to get that wall built here.

[00:51:45] (HOST) Our thanks to Bruce Geibel and Chuck Waddell for sharing their stories with us. You can find Chuck’s book, Farm Boy Can’t Swim on Amazon. In the meantime, I’m going to leave you with a song. Here’s Judy Garland from May 1944, performing Can do, Will do, song of the Seabees. We’ll be back in two weeks with more stories of service, sacrifice and healing. See you.

Full Interview with Bruce Geibel

Full Interview with Chuck Waddell

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