“I volunteered three times before they drafted me but they got me when they needed me, I guess,” Smith said.
“I volunteered for both the Army and Navy but neither one of them wanted me because I had some medical problems with my ears,” said Smith. “After that, I just thought that I was considered ‘4F.’”
He then moved to California, and continued working.
He explained that he was doing “pretty good” in his civilian endeavors when he received a letter stating he needed to report to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis.
“I took my draft induction physical in St. Louis and told them that I would be interested in the Navy,” Smith recalled. “They sent 12 of us over to the federal building and interviewed us. Then,” he concluded, “they said they had openings in the regular Navy, Coast Guard and the Seabees.”
When Smith asked about the mission of the Seabees, he was informed they were construction battalions that built naval bases, airstrips and provided maintenance support in several combat theaters of the war. With an electrical background from construction work he did for a contractor in Russellville during high school, he was convinced the Seabees was the service for him.
“I was inducted into the Navy on April 2, 1943 and they sent me to the Seabees boot camp at Camp Peary, Virginia,” he recalled. “That lasted about six weeks or so and then we came home for 9 days of leave before returning to advanced training at Camp Peary,” he added.
Assigned to Naval Construction Battalion Detachment 1007—a newly commissioned heavy equipment repair outfit—he was transferred to Port Hueneme, California, in mid-June 1943, for additional training. Three weeks later, he and the battalion boarded a troop ship for a journey of more than three weeks to their new home in the South Pacific.
“We got off the ship at the island of Espiritu Santo,” Smith said. “It was a small island 900 miles or so northeast of Australia and was a military supply base during the war.”
