Crews Working On Fort Dix Project

The U.S. Army Reserve asks its soldiers to train one weekend a month and two weeks a year.

Some local soldiers are honoring that annual commitment by paving the way for future soldiers.

More than half of U.S. soldiers heading to or heading home from war pass through Fort Dix in New Jersey.

That's a lot of traffic through here and many roads were unpaved.

The reserve soldiers from the 365th Combat Engineer Battalion out of Schuylkill Haven, Schuylkill County are spending their annual two weeks of training at Fort Dix improving the base and the skills they would use if deployed.

"Exact same job, exact same equipment, exact same people," said Lt. Mark Camlin.

The Army term is Castle IRC. You can think of it as a two- week extreme make over.

Soldiers are paving roads. They're pouring concrete pads where tents will sit.

"They're more or less putting those pads out there to facilitate training in those areas," said Camlin.

And buildings are going up where there was none before.

"Without their support and their knowledge and their expertise, we wouldn't have a good training ground here at Fort Dix," said CSM Richard Jones.

Just like in combat, there are also soldiers here supporting this mission.

Specialist Joseph Suglia of Fleetwood is a medic and runs the aid station for the battalion.

"We go to each job site and we check up on the medics out here, make sure they have supplies, make sure everything's going OK," said Suglia.

Sgt. Charles Mullin is a teacher at Reading High spending his summer break maintaining the electrical equipment needed to complete this work.

"This is kind of an embedded environment where the units are how they would be when they would be deployed," said Mullin. "Rather than bringing civilian issues in, it's all about the military."

They're local soldiers building skills and structures dedicated to serving our country now and in the future.

"The impact they're making is phenomenal," said Jones.