ONALASKA, Wis. - Sixty years ago, Guy Hagar saw the writing on the wall. A construction worker with a young wife and a baby on the way, he figured World War II was about ready to suck him in like it had so many other young American men.He decided to enlist in the Navy, mainly because the uniform lacked neckwear. Hagar had a big neck, and he hated to wear a tie. "I was a ruffian, I guess," he said.

The man at the naval office told Hagar the Navy wasn't taking any more enlistments, so Hagar would have to talk to the local draft board. As Hagar turned to go, the recruiter stopped him."Did you say you work construction?" the recruiter asked. "Ever hear of the Seabees?"

Guy Hagar's prized possession is a picture autographed by "Pappy" Boyington. Dick Riniker photo

Hagar signed up on the spot. His life was changed forever.The small second bedroom in Hagar's Stonefield Manor apartment serves as a combination den, shrine and recording studio. It contains a small color TV and a stereo he uses to make tapes from the bluegrass and country music channels he gets as part of his digital cable TV package.

Reminders of his military service are everywhere. Pictures, military ID cards, a clock he made 10 years ago emblazoned with the Seabees insignia, the mess kit he carried with him, a duffle bag with the names of the Pacific islands where he served, a 50th anniversary Seabees hat with his discharge pin, campaign ribbons and battle stars stuck on it.

On the wall behind Hagar's swivel rocker is a framed print depicting the shooting down of Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, the World War II ace who shot down 28 Japanese planes before he went down himself. Boyington survived his stay in a Japanese prison camp and was immortalized on the TV show "Baa Baa Black Sheep," in which Robert Conrad played the leader of the Black Sheep Squadron.Hagar had the print signed by Boyington in 1980.

In a raspy, reedy voice, Hagar recalled how Boyington kept a line of autograph seekers waiting half an hour while he and Hagar reminisced about the war like long-separated brothers. Boyington had used South Pacific airstrips Hagar helped build, and was based 60 miles from Hagar."He was a good egg," Hagar said.

A November 1945 letter from Navy Secretary James Forrestal is Hagar's prized possession. The letter thanks Hagar for doing his part to help win the war. The paper is amazingly white for a 57-year-old document because until recently Hagar kept it in a lock box. He decided recently that he might as well display it, so he tacked it on the wall. "It's going to be here till they drag me out," he said.

In some ways, Hagar's body betrays his 83 years. The fingers on both hands slant away from his thumbs, like rows of trees not quite downed by a storm. "I've got arthritis. I can't do nothing," he said.His right eye drifts off-center and both eyes are clouded by age. He rises from his chair with difficulty, and a walker stands at the ready nearby. Every 15 minutes or so, a rumbling cough rocks his body.But Hagar's memory of the war years is vivid. The names of guys he served with - Frame, Braden, Reilly, Sanchez, Curtis, Handlebar Hank, Two-Ton Pepke, Lemonhead - come without hesitation, and the stories pour out of him in a constant stream that runs for three-and-a-half hours, making a reporter wonder how time could go so fast.

It probably helps that Hagar has attended 16 Seabees reunions, organizing three himself. Reminiscing with old comrades has a way of preserving memories.

The Seabees were formed within a month of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. With America finally in the war, workers were needed to build advance bases in the war zone, but using civilian labor wasn't practical because if these workers resisted during an enemy attack, they could be summarily executed as guerrillas.

Members of the naval construction battalions became known as Seabees, and a logo was designed showing a bee wearing a naval hat, holding a machine gun in its front hands and a wrench and hammer in the other two visible hands. Rear Adm. Ben Moreell, who spearheaded the Seabees' formation, gave them a Latin motto: Construimus, Batuimus - "We build, we fight."

Before the end of the war, 325,000 men had signed up for the Seabees, and they built more than 400 advance bases. Eighty percent of the Seabees served in the Pacific Theater on more than 300 islands. They built 111 major airstrips, 441 piers, 700 square blocks of warehouses, hospitals to serve 70,000 patients and housing for 1.5 million men.

Because of the emphasis on recruiting men with skills rather than fighting ability, the Seabees were older and more resistant to military decorum than other branches. Seabees had a reputation as the most unmilitary of military organizations. Perfect for a rebellious "ruffian" like Hagar.

Hagar grew up in Monroe, Wis., one of seven children. He completed eighth grade by the time he was 12 but only attended two months of high school. He was on the small side to begin with, and it didn't make sense to start high school that young, so he took a year off. The lure of the working world was stronger than books, so his school days were over.

He hired out as a farm worker when he was 14 for $20 a week, sending home his entire salary to help out his folks. Before long he ended up in the construction business, the same line of work as his father, and met a young Irish beauty named Irene.As the 1930s drew to a close, they decided to marry. He was 20 and she had just turned 18 when they drove to Iowa in search of a marriage license and a justice of the peace. On their first stop in Iowa, Hagar told the clerk his true age and was refused a license because he didn't have parental permission.

He learned from that mistake and told the next clerk in Manchester, Iowa, he was 21. Thanks to this small deception, the license was theirs. They were married Jan. 6, 1940, in a civil ceremony at the home of a Methodist minister. "I could smell the sauerkraut he had for dinner," Hagar said.

They had no money for a honeymoon, so it was back to Monroe and back to work. But their first two years together would seem like a honeymoon compared with what was to come. A month before their second wedding anniversary, the country was plunged into World War II. Six months after Pearl Harbor, Irene was expecting a child, and Hagar faced a tough decision. On the one hand, he had a duty to help his country. On the other hand, he had a young wife and a baby on the way. Facing a likely draft notice, he knew what he had to do: He signed up for the Seabees.

On March 23, 1943, a week before his son was born, Hagar headed for Camp Peary in Virginia for basic training as a member of the 93rd Naval Construction Battalion.

Camp Peary had another name among the recruits: Camp Panic. "It was nothing but mud," Hagar said.

After completing training in June, he got a nine-day pass so he could go see his son. On the train ride from New York to Chicago, the cars were so packed he had no place to sit. If he wanted to take a load off his feet, he said, he'd go out and sit on the coupling between cars.

It took three days for Hagar to get to Lena, Ill., where his wife and 3-month-old son, Larry, were staying with relatives. He walked most of the last 15 miles. The trip was well worth the effort, of course, because he got to see his son before shipping out. He wouldn't see Larry again until the child was 21/2 years old.

After stops at a couple of other military bases for more training, Hagar and his 1,100-member battalion moved in early August to Port Hueneme in California, where they stayed until they shipped out for the Russell Islands on Oct. 14, 1943.

By this time, the Seabees already had a reputation for resourcefulness, not only for being able to carve a military base out of the jungle but for their skills at "midnight procurement." The night before shipping out, Hagar did his bit to live up to the Seabees reputation: He tunneled under the camp fence and smuggled in two bottles of wine for diversion on the long trip to the South Pacific.

He didn't get caught, but he learned about sand fleas the hard way. And Hagar never got a chance to enjoy the wine on the 26-day trip to the Russells. He barely even felt like smoking.He was too seasick.

Hagar revels in telling stories of the South Pacific, the Solomon Islands, the Philippines. It was about as far from small-town Wisconsin as a young guy could get. Just about every aspect of his life was more difficult, and danger lurked behind every tree, but his life had never been that exciting, before or since. As a bulldozer operator, Hagar stormed the beaches with the first wave every time his battalion landed on a new island. "When we hit those islands, there was no welcoming band. There was nobody there but Japs," Hagar said.

Sixty years have done nothing to cool Hagar's resentment toward the Japanese, and he calls them Japs without a thought toward multicultural sensitivity. But Hagar saw Japanese soldiers fight with courage that bordered on brazen, and he never thought of them as anything but formidable adversaries.

Hagar tells the story of the first night he spent on a new island. He and two comrades were exhausted from working all day - "Us construction guys worked from daylight to dusk." They set up their hammocks, crawled in and zipped the mosquito netting that stood between them and malaria.

Hanging there in the hammock, enveloped by the sounds of the jungle, Hagar started to think he was a sitting duck. An enemy soldier could easily sneak up and shove a bayonet through the bottom of his hammock, and the netting that protected him felt like a cage.He wasn't alone in feeling that way. His buddy Frame voiced his feelings first: "I'm getting the hell out of here. Who's with me?"The three spent the night under a bulldozer.

Hagar came under fire many times during his Seabees days, both from the strafing of Japanese fighter planes and enemy snipers, who had a million places to hide.

But at least in an air raid or when the snipers started firing, you could take cover and fire back. If you were in a troop landing craft and came under fire from an enemy plane, Hagar said, they closed up the doors on the troops. Supposedly, it would delay the boat's sinking if it was hit. But the closed doors only amplified the feeling of helplessness. With smoke from the boat's anti-aircraft guns wafting in through the ventilation holes, even the tough guys would reach for their Bibles, Hagar said. "It makes a believer out of you."

Despite their essentially non-combat status, the Seabees lost nearly 300 men to enemy fire in the Pacific Theater. But they lost 500 men to accidents. Construction is a hazardous business, after all, often involving dynamite.Hagar recalled one incident - he never knew if it was an attack or an accident - where a truck full of dynamite blew up, taking out five of his fellow Seabees. "The meat was hanging on the branches. Just blown 'em all to hell."

He had plenty of close calls himself. Once when he was clearing some jungle with his bulldozer, Hagar dodged a falling tree limb by inches. He also managed to dodge the bullets and bomb fragments, some of which came within inches of doing damage. "I had mud blown on me, but never so much as a mark," he said.

Shortly before his discharge, Hagar had to have some stitches in his hand from a construction accident, but other than that, he said, "I made it through pretty good."

By the time Hagar got home to Monroe, his son was walking and talking and had no recollection of meeting his father two years earlier. Young Larry's first words to his father were "go away."

"I certainly don't remember saying that, but it's something my mother told me," said Larry Hagar, who was La Crosse County's deputy director of human services for 26 years before moving to Marathon County, where he is social service director.But when Larry Hagar was growing up, he said, his father didn't talk at all about what he did in the war. Maybe the horrors were still too fresh to share, especially with a growing boy.

Over the years, his father has shared bits and pieces of his history with him, but he has never sat down and talked with his son in depth about his Seabees experiences. More and more people, including Larry Hagar, are recognizing the sad truth: We don't have much time before there won't be any more Guys to tell their stories, to share what they saw during a war that shook the world.Larry Hagar hopes he gets a chance to get hear his father's history firsthand. "The next time I see him ..."

Randy Erickson can be reached at (608) 782-9710, ext. 446, or rerickson@lacrossetribune.com.

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