Alaska Army National Guard engineers train with Romanian counterparts

CINCU, Romania - Alaska Army National Guard Soldiers 2nd Lt. Maria Hart and Sgt. Corine Barrera led two main projects during exercise Resolute Castle 2019 at Land Forces Combat Training Center Getica, May 1 -21.

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.

Hart and Barrera are both Soldiers in the 207th Engineer Utility Detachment. 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.

The two Soldiers started by jointly leading the 3500-meter Mobile Armored Target project, while Hart later took on another task at 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, operated mainly by Guardsman Spc. Colin White. 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 dump trucks at this site were mainly operated by Staff Sgt. Jorge Palermo, Pvt. Julien Harris and Spc. Jeremy Weller. The bulldozers were operated by Spc. Michael Wilson and Spc. Riley Solie.

The main part the 207th EUD Soldiers are focusing on is 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 it 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 a 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 for the Romanian soldiers.