Selfless service

Soldiers Magazine, June, 2004 by Grant Sattler

FERNANDO Bautista had been working with a group of architects and engineers as a building designer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' New York District on the 20th floor of 26 Federal Plaza on Sept. 11, 2001, when they heard a big bang and felt the building shake.

After that fateful day the engineers worked from alternate locations throughout the city. "Things were different," said Bautista, a 20-year resident of the Big Apple. A year after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center he moved to Wiesbaden, Germany, as part of the Corps of Engineers' Europe District and volunteered to participate in the District's Field Force Engineering Program in Kuwait.

While serving in Kuwait Bautista was involved in the master planning of 17 airfields, including the one at Balad.

"I really experienced being a part of the greatest army in the world," said Bautista. "It has been one of the greatest things I have done in my professional life. I am an American, I am a New Yorker. I had to do something."--Grant Sattler, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Europe District