Few people under 60 years old can remember the Vietnam War. Officially beginning in 1955, direct U.S. combat ended with the passing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. Over three million U.S. service members would serve in Vietnam, with 543,000 of those being in the country during the height of the fighting around 1968. 58,281 U.S. military members, including 70 others who remained behind after the combat troops pulled out would pay with their lives during the conflict. This number does not include the enormous numbers of allied and enemy soldiers, along with civilians who would die.

Having endured war since World War 2, the country then known as French Indochina was pounded by the Japanese, then the French, followed by the Viet Minh, and then by the U.S. and its allies against the units supporting North Vietnam. The country’s entire infrastructure had been badly damaged or destroyed by war. Even as fighting would continue for several years after the U.S. pulled out, Vietnam has made a strong recovery from those war years, with the infrastructure in southern Vietnam now in even better shape than in the northern part of the country.

A good bit of credit for the southern Vietnam recovery can be credited to a lesser known branch of the military commonly known as the Seabees, who built much of that improvement. Seabees are construction workers who are also fighters. Organized in 1942 after the attack on Pearl Harbor as the Navy Construction Battalion, the initials “C.B” were arranged as “Seabees”, with their motto being “Can Do”. Organized with civil engineer officers and skilled tradesmen, the group was tasked with an extremely wide variety of projects.

Eighty percent of the World War 2 Seabees would be sent to the Pacific Theater to make invasions, often with Marines, while the remainder would serve In the European Theater, especially on D Day and the crossing of the Rhine River. General McArthur would say of the Seabees that the only problem he had with them was that there were not enough of them.

Held together following the war, the Seabees would serve in the following conflicts, as well as In military preparations.

With the coming of the Vietnam War, Seabees would go in early to help the CIA and Green Berets to set up forward outposts and airfields to help at winning over the local citizens. When fighting occurred, the Seabees would fight alongside their service members. Seabees would receive Purple Hearts, Silver and Bronze Stars, among other medals, with Seabee Marvin Shields earning the Medal of Honor. Following Vietnam, two other Seabees would earn the Medal of Honor in later conflicts. During the war, the Seabees would be seen In very practical 13 man units, with a Civil Engineer being the commanding officer, along with 3 equipment operators, 2 mechanics, 2 builders, a steelworker, an electrician, a utilities man, a surveyor and a corpsman. All the men in the unit would then be cross-trained into a high skill level at doing the other unit jobs.

Along with military projects tasked to the Seabees, the teams, often with civilian help, also built roads, bridge, schools, hospitals, and such to repair the countryside’s devastation that came with three decades of war and destruction. The corpsman would also often set up medical stations where the civilians, often with years of no medical care, could come for treatment.

Witt community’s Troy Branch was one of those Vietnam Seabees, who had a background to make a valued member of a Seabee unit. The oldest of seven children of Floyed and Luise Bohanan Branch, Troy was delivered by Dr. Thomas, who had also delivered Dolly Parton. The family would make several moves with Troy’s dad working as a truck driver for Bush Brothers while also a farmer, running a dairy farm at Jones Cove and later a businessman who ran Morristown’s Enka Y Motel.

Having attending school in the first two grades at Fairgarden, Troy would move on to Caton’s Chapel through the 8th grade, before graduating from Sevier County High School, where he graduated in 1965, after having spent many years as a schoolmate of Dolly’s. Having worked at Bushes through high school, Troy headed to Jefferson City’s Magnavox, before being drafted that same year. Taking the opportunity to join the Seabees, he did his basic training at the Great Lakes. Leaving the cold north, he was then sent to Port Hueneme, California for his job training. “It had the perfect weather there”, he remembered. “the weather was never over 75 or under 60 degrees.”

“I went to A School where they taught us to operate everything from cranes to turcks, then on to Chu Lai, Vietnam in late 1966 with the U.S. Navy MCB8 Mobile Construction Battalion,” he told. “When I got there I operated graders, transits, scrapers dozers, cement mixers and more. One of our missions at Chu Lai was to build a concrete air strip with revetments for the A-4 planes. We also built ice plant, a milk reconstituting plant and a stage for Bob Hope, who I didn’t get to see. Our other detachments were spread all over. After 8 months we came back for more schools and combat training.”.

After training more, including metal, well drilling and blasting schools, we went back to Vietnam in January 28, 1968 and landed south of Hue where we worked night and day building roads, bridges and pipelines. Our main base was at Phu Bai. During the Tet Offensive our unit was on the front lines where we got hit 3 times on the first night. I was laying down in our trench when a rocket hit and wasn’t hurt, but we lost one man and hurt a lot of our guys had concussions. After that, I spent a lot of time running most of the equipment. We worked in shifts 24 hours a day and under lights at night. I came home in September and in February, 1969, I was with the ACB1 (Amphibious Construction) helped train several Seal teams until I was discharged in November.”

After returning home, Troy took a brief job with the Blaylock Construction Company before moving on to the Hamblen County Highway Department as an equipment operator. In 1972, he would open a Shell service station which he sold to go to work with L & N Railroad in their signal maintenance section. He would retire from L & N after 34 years of service. Presently married to Dawn Calahhham, Troy has two sons from a previous marriage – Gerald (Victoria) and Chris. as well as a grandson, D.J.

Having kept an interest in restoring old cars and equipment since his teenage years, Troy can often be found in the well appointed garage beside his house, where he can relax and visit with some of his veteran buddies. Troy helped In organizing the first Seabees of America unit In East Tennessee, who now host an annual Seabee reunion every October.