CINCU, Romania — Two of the 54 Alaska Army National Guard Soldiers of 207th Engineer Utility Detachment demonstrated engineering leadership during their participation in exercise Resolute Castle 2019 May 1 through 21 at Land Forces Combat Training Center Getica, Cincu, Romania.
Resolute Castle is a multi-national, joint exercise with real-world outputs of completed construction projects that build and enhance training capabilities around Eastern Europe.
Alaska Army National Guard 2nd Lt. Maria Hart and Sgt. Corine Barrera, both of 207th EUD, led two main projects during the exercise. The 207th EUD is the second of many rotations of U.S. National Guard units set to come to Romania to support the exercise.
Barrera is a horizontal-construction engineer, and Hart is an engineer officer. Horizontal construction engineers use bulldozers, cranes, graders and other heavy equipment to move tons of earth and material to complete construction projects for the Army National Guard.
The two Soldiers started by jointly leading a 350-meter Mobile Armored Target project, while Hart later took on a different project at the training center’s Cherry Hill.
The 350 MAT is a range for armored-combat vehicles and required a large amount of attention in the area meant to be an access road. The site was covered in mud, which they dug out using an excavator. The site was then covered by geomat soil-retention material and later a layer of rocks, which were dropped off by dump trucks from another site.
The main part the 207th EUD Soldiers focused on was the access road for the range, Barrera said.
The Cherry Hill site, overseen by Hart and her Romanian counterpart, 2nd Lt. Ovidiu Moisa, is a road across the training center that is intended to become another access point for the Romanian training base.
“If it wasn’t for [our Soldiers], and their motivation to get their task completed, we wouldn’t have gotten as much done,” Hart said.
The Soldiers working on this site have been operating heavy equipment such as graders, rollers and dump trucks to fix the road for easier access.
The road is intended to lead to another entry-control point, Hart said. The plan is to have multiple CHUs, or containerized-housing unit hard-stand sleeping structures, at the end of the road, but for now there is a tent city set up beyond the ECP for the Romanian soldiers.
The 207th EUD expects to finish road repairs on the Cherry Hill site, and terrain repairs on the 350 MAT site, by the end of their 22-day rotation as another incoming group of National Guard Soldiers were expected to arrive to begin their portion of continuing construction and maintenance for resolute Castle.
