By:
Lorrie Ross
“I became active duty in October that year and shipped out Christmas Day 1942.” — Kenneth Woodard
Clay County native Kenneth Woodard has seen a lot during his 95 years of life. Not only did he work on the construction of Lake Chatuge, but he crossed the Pacific Ocean as a Seabee in World War II.
“Seabees are like Army engineers,” he explained. “Mostly builders.” The term Seabee is derived from CB, which stands for Construction Battalion.
Woodard said he enlisted before he was drafted, then he was sworn in July of 1942. “I became active duty in October that year and shipped out Christmas Day 1942,” he said. “Boot camp was in Davisville, RI. It was a new base and the coldest winter they’d had in 50 years.”
Until he boarded a ship in Norfolk, he had never been on anything bigger than a small sailboat. “The ship I got on in Norfolk was the first time I’d even seen an ocean-going boat,” he said. “We went down the east coast to the Panama Canal. We stayed in Panama for 10 days waiting for a convoy to go on out into the Pacific. We went through the locks and then I was on a ship for 42 days before I could put my feet on the ground again. My first liberty was in New Caledonia, New Zealand, a pretty good sized French town.” Most things there were similar to the United States, but he recalled how the houses had kitchens separate from the houses.
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