MISSOURI GUARD HELPS PANAMA (FIRST IN A SERIES OF FOUR)

CAIMITO, Panama -- A major deployment of Missouri's Army National Guard troops to Central America arrived early March 4 at Howard Air Force Base in Panama, southwest of Panama City.

After four hours in the air and 1 1/2 hours on chartered school buses about 220 soldiers of the 1140th Combat Engineer Battalion -- mostly from Southeast Missouri -- were shuttled to the base camp, Camp Legendre about sunrise.

The temporary camp is nestled in remote mountains dotted with palm trees and other tropical vegetation about 50 miles southwest of Panama City. Camp Legendre, near the village Caimito, maintains between 500 and 550 men and women from Army Reserve or Guard battalions.

Most of the troops participating in this two-week rotation will finish their tours and will return Saturday to Missouri. But, Camp Lengendre has been operational since Jan. 15 and won't completely disband until mid-June.

And, for the two weeks that the soldiers leave their families and their regular jobs they haven't been on vacation; they've been improving Panama's infrastructure in a region where people typically travel by foot or ride horses on paths.

During the six-month project called Task Force Mule, engineer battalions from Missouri, Kansas, Louisiana and Florida will build 14 schools and three health clinics, create eight miles of road, improve 32 miles of secondary roads, dig three water wells and rehabilitate seven other wells in the area. Between 5,500 and 6,000 soldiers will pass through Camp Legendre's gate during the course of the project called Fuertes Caminos, which means strong roads.

Many of the soldiers leaving the United States last week for their two weeks of active training in Panama were from engineer units based at Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Perryville, Portageville and Sikeston.

These two weeks and additional service, one weekend a month, are the least requirements the National Guard demands in order for a soldier to remain active in a unit.

Other units besides those from engineer battalions also will participate in Task Force Mule.

Besides a few thousand engineers, Mule also needs communication specialists, cooks, medics, pilots, police and others to conduct a smooth running camp.

With those units, 18 states will be represented during the duration of Task Force Mule.

"You're going to need a lot of different people for a mission like this," said the camp commander, Lt. Col. Darrell Politte. "You have to collect the equipment you're going to need and figure out how to ship that equipment and the necessary troops to the Republic of Panama."

Politte, who calls Fenton home, has been planning Camp Legendre with members of the National Guard and the U.S. Southern Command since September 1993. The Southern Command controls military operations in the Western Hemisphere south of Mexico.