The Book:
SEABEE71
IN CHU LAI
A 350 page memoir of a Navy Journalist's 14 months with the Seabees.
Photographs and text copyright © 1967 and 2019 by David H. Lyman
Seabee71.com
Seabee 71 Forms
We Arrive in Vietnam
Construction Projects
Danger
Civic Action Projects
MEDCAP Clinics in the villages
The Men of Seventy-One
The Real Vietnam
The Fishing Village of han Tra
Short-Timers
A Marine A4-A fighter from MAG 13 sets down on the short cross-wind SATS Runway, rocketing past the arresting gear (which 71 kept fixing) its tail hook aiming for the wire.
Seabee Stories from
Mobile Construction Battalion
Seventy-One (1966 to 1967)
As a Navy journalism (JO3), it was my job to make photographs, write stories and publish what the men and officers of MCB-71 were doing. I was more Public Relations hack than a real journalist, as I was restricted in what I could write and send out. That was then. This is now, more than 50 years later. I now have the chance to tell more of the story of what it was like to live with this bunch of hard working and harder drinking Seabees of Seventhy-One.
The Battalion began to form in August 1966, then went through 7 months of build-up and combat training.
In April of 1967, the battalion arrived in Chu Lai, Vietnam for a 7 months deployment. It was here I got the chance to observe and write about the Seabees building a War for the unit's monthly newspaper.
Stories of 14 Months with the Seabees of 71
The book I wrote is a personal memoir of my experience in Vietnam, the stories I wrote, the projects the men worked on, what camp life was like, what it was like to photograph the Vietnamese, their landscape, hamlets and and cities. In the process, I matured as a man, as a journalist and as an American. I came to understand more of the political reasoning of that, and I suppose all wars, for it appears we have learned little from the Vietnam Experience that is manifest today.
I've included brief excerpts of the stories in the book on this website, together with many more photographs from my personal collection of negatives, photographs that did not make it into the book.
To see and read excerpts of stories, click on any one of the links below.
Click on any one of the images below to open this gallery.