Soldiers from the Fort Bragg, N.C.-based 30th Engr. FC '95 was the third annual exercise of its kind conducted in that country since 1993, and many of the soldiers from the Panama-based 536th Engineer Battalion taking part had participated in FC '93. The villagers came out by the hundreds every day to do whatever they could to help us, and to cheer us on. They were so grateful that we were doing something to make their lives easier. In the remote villages of the most densely populated country in Latin America, children walk miles to attend overcrowded schools.
Men drive their oxcarts laboriously over treacherous, makeshift roads.
And village women spend the better part of a day walking to the closest river or stream to fill the large, colorful water pitchers they carry on their heads, and to wash clothes and lay them out on the rocks to dry. Here, where plumbing and electricity are virtually nonexistent and medical facilities and shops unreachable, people often have to risk their lives to stay alive. Soldiers erect a 62-foot tower, part of a suspended footbridge that will link Salvadoran villages with those in Honduras. Among the projects completed by 536th Engr. Michael Patterson, a member of the unit's Headquarters and Headquarters Co., called heading the survey team for the 370-foot long bridge three miles from the northern border with Honduras one of the best experiences of his Army career.