The first priority on almost all newly secured islands was to build an airfield. Naval construction battalions, or CBs, who became known as ‘Seabees’, dynamited jungle, graded the ground with bulldozers, laid perforated steel strips called Marston mat and covered it with crushed coral. Sometimes landing just behind the first wave of marines, they could have a new landing ground ready for action in under ten days. One officer said of these incredibly tough and ingenious gangs that they ‘smelled like goats, lived like dogs and worked like horses’.
