NOVEMBER 8, 2004

MILITARY.COM RUNS ESSAY "SEABEE SHADOW WARRIORS"

Operation Seabees Knowledge is pleased to announce that OSK co-founder and naval affairs commentator Joe Buff, in his regular column on the major professional website for the military community and military supporters/enthusiasts, www.Military.com, recently wrote an essay about the Seabees, which in particular highlights the new Seabee Engineer Reconnaissance Teams (SERTs). These ten man teams, created before Operation Iraqi Freedom began, operate stealthily at the forward edge of the battle area. Each man is a Seabee, starts out in a regular Seabee rating, receives additional training, and once his battalion's need for the SERT component is done, he returns to his regular duties with his battalion. The role of the SERT teams, as genuine Special Operations Forces, is to gather engineering intelligence data in real-time and relay it back to higher echelons via high-tech digital communications equipment. This allows combat construction tasks to be completed in a rapid and optimally efficient way as to both manpower and materials -- thus serving as a powerful force multiplier for the Marine Corps/Seabee and Army engineering and fighting formations with which the SERT teams work. The essay (note that it is posted on Military.com as two pages, so don't forget to read the second page!) may be found at http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Buff_110104-P1,00.html. The beginning of the piece refers to an essay Joe Buff wrote on Military.com a year ago, "Seabees -- Special Forces?" and includes a link to that earlier piece in Joe's column Archive. Military.com now has over four million registered members. Such public exposure about the Bees and their indispensible role in modern combat, to a large general audience, is a key goal of OSK.

May 05, 2004

TRAGEDY STRIKES NMCB-14 SEABEES IN IRAQ!

Attack kills 5 Florida Seabees
Ramadi becomes hotbed as Marine casualties grow
By CAROL ROSENBERG
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq - Insurgents fired mortars inside a U.S. base in Ramadi Sunday, killing a soldier and five Navy Seabees from a Florida reserve unit and wounding about 20 others. The casualties bring to seven the number of sailors killed in three days from the same unit, which arrived here just two weeks ago to work on Iraqi reconstruction projects.

In all, nine American forces were killed across Iraq in guerrilla attacks Sunday, including two soldiers killed in northwest Baghdad and another in the northern oil city of Kirkuk. None were identified.

But the mortar shelling of a Marine base in Ramadi caused the worst Navy casualties of the year-old Iraqi invasion, and came as the Marines are forging an alliance with Iraqi army generals to quell a ferocious anti-American insurrection in Fallujah, the flashpoint Sunni Muslim city of 250,000. Ramadi had seen some of the fiercest fighting of western Iraq's Anbar province in the month-plus Marine deployment. Twelve Marines were killed in a single ambush of their patrol there on April 6.

"They really don't like us," said Navy Petty Officer 3d Class Michael Rambo, 27, a Seabee from Clearwater, Fla., who suffered shrapnel wounds in his chest and side, as he lay at Camp Fallujah's Bravo Surgical Co. hospital awaiting X-rays on Sunday night.

Friday, he suffered a sprained thumb and other light injuries when insurgents fired missiles at a U.S convoy of armored Humvees carrying engineering inspectors to school-building projects in a neighboring village. Two fellow sailors were killed in that attack, and two more were wounded.

Sunday's mortar attack was far worse, tearing through dozens of Seabees who just moments before mustered in the yard of a Marine base for a visiting admiral. Just after Navy Rear Adm. Charles Kubic stepped away, a mortar round struck about 300 yards from the men. As they scattered, a second mortar made a near direct hit, killing some sailors on the spot and spewing shrapnel around the yard.

Navy corpsmen converged on the scene, and then evacuated the casualties by helicopter in 10-minute intervals to medical field hospitals across western Iraq. The most serious went to Baghdad and Balad.

"It was real quick, the medical evacuation plan worked, and they did a great job," said Rambo, an ex-Marine and part-time children's pastor at a Tampa Sunday School who was in college until he was called up to reserve duty with his unit late last year.

"We'll get through this," he said of the devastation to his unit, Naval Mobile Combat Battalion 14, based in Jacksonville, Fla.

Just two weeks in Iraq, the 400-member reserve unit is on its first overseas deployment since World War II, where it served in the Pacific, specifically in Guadalcanal and New Caledonia. Unit members are on average 42 years old. Friday's attack came as a U.S. military convoy was moving between Al-Asad base and Ramadi. Insurgents fired explosives, killing two Seabees, and surviving sailors fought back. Rambo came out shooting and captured one the insurgents, who is now an EPW, an enemy prisoner of war, a fellow sailor said. None of the dead and wounded was identified to give the Pentagon time to notify the sailors' next of kin in what Marine Maj. T.V. Johnson characterized as a "mass casualty" episode. "It's been a bad couple of days for the Seabees," he said.

"We're here to help rebuild the country, help them out, trying to keep all the bad guys from taking over like Saddam," said Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class James Nappier, 46, of West Palm Beach, Fla., a water well driller, before surgery to remove shrapnel from his leg and arm. "Some guys were still reeling from the other day."

© 2004 The Sun Herald and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.sunherald.com

February 26, 2004

OSK FOUNDERS COMMITTEE AUTHORS JOE BUFF AND DAVID E. MEADOWS INTERVIEWED

Christy Tillery French, a well known author and also a book reviewer for the highly-respected Midwest Book Review, has conducted interviews with two members of the OPERATION SEABEES KNOWLEDGE Volunteer Founders Committee. Both David E. Meadows and Joe Buff spend part of their time as military-suspense novelists, and have upcoming books featuring modern SEABEES that are listed on SeabeesInfoHQ.org's "Books & Gifts" page

The full interviews can be seen at:

Joe Buff Interview

David E. Meadows Interview

February 25, 2004

"OPERATION SEABEES KNOWLEDGE" GETS NEW WEBSITE "RALLYING POINT"

The grassroots volunteer effort OPERATION SEABEES KNOWLEDGE now has a permanent home and "Rallying Point" in cyberspace! The website SeabeesInfoHQ.org has just gone live. The purpose of this website is to help the general public, the broader military community, and the entire Seabees family all stay in better touch. The goal is to expand awareness of the ongoing vital importance of the U.S. Navy Seabees and Civil Engineer Corps in defending our nation in combat and in delivering humanitarian aid around the world. Important features of this new Web site include links to major CEC/Seabees organizations, historical foundations, and museums; relevant books and gift shops; interactive and frequently updated fun and engaging content features such as "Did You Know?", "Ask Stormin'", and "Seabees Say"; and -- most important of all -- materials for a Speaker's Kit plus a Volunteer or Contact e-mail address to help bring closer together Seabees of all eras and interested audience-groups of all sorts.

OPERATION SEABEES KNOWLEDGE seabeesinfohq.org E-Mail seabees@seabeesinfohq.org