Guard members part of a joint team helping Surinamese partners

By Army Spc. Andrew Turner
South Dakota National Guard

Cadet Justin Kolbeck cuts through a piece of wood to be used in a sun shelter at the Pater van der Pluym School in Brownsweg, Suriname, Aug. 8, 2011. Kolbeck, a cadet with the South Dakota National Guard's 155th Engineering Company is helping remodel the school during the New Horizons 2011 exercise. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Andrew Turner) (Released)
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PARAMARIBO, Suriname (8/23/11) - Guard members, working with service members from all branches of the U.S. military traveled to Suriname, South America, between March and August of this year to participate in the 2011 New Horizons exercise.

New Horizons was a cooperative mission with the Surinamese government providing military training and quality of life improvements for citizens.

The overall mission ended up being a huge undertaking, involving a diverse array of engineering projects, medical clinics, security forces training events and civil affairs initiatives.

“We have over 47,500 man-hours invested in these projects,” said Air Force Capt. Charles Hansen, the New Horizons 2011 officer-in-charge for mission support. “This is pretty incredible for the type of work these teams are doing and for the short amount of time they have.”

One of the time investments has been engineering projects.

Engineers from the South Dakota National Guard’s 155th Engineering Company and 114th Civil Engineer Squadron, the Air Force’s 820th RED HORSE, the Air Force Reserve’s 555th, 556th RED HORSE and 445th Civil Engineering Squadrons along with the Marine Reserve’s Wing Support Squadron 472 all participated in the construction projects, said Hansen.

These projects included building two schools and two medical clinics, as well as making improvements to three community parks throughout Suriname.

Building the schools will help the Surinamese government meet their educational goals, while the clinics will help push to decentralize health care so it can be more accessible in locations further from Paramaribo, the country’s capital, he said. Adding, the engineers worked extremely hard to complete the construction projects quickly.

“The projects tasked to the engineers were finished ahead of schedule and under budget,” he said. “Because of this, we were then able to recognize some other needs in the local community that we were able to impact with our engineer’s remaining time.”

Many of the extra projects the engineers took on were aimed at improving the quality of life and health of the communities, such as fixing bathrooms and water lines, Hansen said.

While the construction projects were in full swing, U.S. military personnel from a full array of medical specialties conducted veterinary, dental and medical readiness training exercises in several communities in Suriname, providing free care to local citizens.

Like the construction projects, the medical teams involved in the various exercises were made up of healthcare professionals from the Air Force, Navy, Army and Marines.

“We’ve learned that general practice medicine is widely available and supported by the [Surinamese] government,” Hansen said. “Many of the patients that attended the exercises desired eyeglasses or dental extractions; because these specialized practices are much more difficult for local people to obtain due to the costs.”

Hansen explained that the turn out for these medical exercises was much better than originally planned, with the medical teams treating over 20,000 patients over the course of the exercise.

A third major task conducted by U.S. personnel during the exercise was providing basic security training for Surinamese forces.

Soldiers, Airmen and Marines taught basic security techniques for three classes of 30 Surinamese students each, Hansen said.

The personnel involved were assigned to the South Dakota National Guard’s 235th Military Police Company, the Illinois National Guard’s 183rd Security Forces Squadron and the Marine Reserve’s Marine Wing Support Group 47.

“Instructors worked with platoons, mostly formed of new Surinamese military members fresh from their basic and advanced infantry training, and taught them basic security operations,” Hansen said.

The training included the proper way to handcuff detainees, inspecting vehicles for explosives, and various other security topics, he said. This diverse training gave the participants an important skill set, and helped develop a partnership where both the Surinamese and U.S. forces could work with, and learn from, each other.

“The hidden element of this is it gives the security trainers on the U.S. side the opportunity to teach a foreign national basic security tactics,” Hansen said. “They do this in a non-hostile environment, and are able to take those skills with them to places like Iraq or Afghanistan where the environments are a lot more contentious.”

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