BUILT UP SEABEES GAVE WOMAN NEW SENSE OF SELF.

Byline: Grace Lee Staff Writer

PORT HUENEME - A change of pace was all Simi Valley native Cheryl Courier was looking for the day she put college on hold and enlisted in the Seabees.

What she found - amid falling bombs, 120-degree heat and the punishing task of building bridges and roads in the Iraqi desert - was inner strength, resourcefulness and confidence.

``Now, I can do anything, in any place and any climate,'' said Courier, who just returned from a six-month deployment with the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Four. ``I know I'll survive.''

The 24-year-old petty officer was among the first Seabees to land in Iraq. Her battalion was the first to reach Baghdad and the only West Coast one to play an active role in the war.

``This is the heaviest engagement of battle Seabees saw since Vietnam,'' said Cmdr. Jim Worcester, who oversaw Battalion Four. And it was the first in which women in the armed forces played an integral role in major combat, serving alongside fighting Marines and soldiers.

Courier was handpicked by her commanding officer to join the first group in the battalion to embark for the Middle East in March. The former Moorpark College student was part of a task force that crossed the Kuwaiti border into Iraq to build bridges and roads for soldiers and supplies.

About 50 of the 600 Seabees in Courier's unit were women.

Worcester said he had high - and equal - expectations of men and women, and that no one let him down.

``A lot of women went north,'' he said. ``A lot of women didn't go north.''

Throughout the war, Battalion Four saw more combat than any other Seabees, he said. ``Everyone performed magnificently.''

Worcester said many of the challenges that Seabees, including women, face could be met with resourcefulness. ``If something's too heavy to lift, you get a piece of machinery to lift it or you get someone to help you.''

Courier learned to be more ingenious at tasks like fixing a hydrologic hose in the middle of the desert, but found that some of the challenges required sheer endurance.

``When we first left Kuwait, we couldn't shower for three weeks,'' said Courier, who wears her dark red hair long.

In the 120-degree heat in which she lost 30 pounds, she said there were days she was aware her physical strength did not match that of her male counterparts.

Exactly how she made it through the toughest sleep-deprived days, she said, she doesn't know. The important thing for her is that she did. ``I was there to do a job.''

Worcester said it was a job she excelled at, adding ``she had this calm resolve about her. She hung in. She was calm under pressure and she did exactly what she was supposed to do.''

Courier's mother, Stacy Jurgenson, said her daughter took her by surprise by joining the Seabees, but not by excelling in it.

Looking back, she said, it makes sense that her daughter, a hard worker and straight-A student, ``made a difference by changing the world.''

For Courier, the rewards of her Seabee duty are clear.

``I'm not only proud that I got through all of it with all my fingers and toes and my sanity intact,'' she said. ``I'm proud that when I have kids one day, they'll read their history books about Operation Enduring Freedom, and they'll know I was part of it.''

Grace Lee, [phone]

grace.lee(at)dailynews.com

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(color) Cheryl Courier of Simi Valley has just returned from a six-month deployment with the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Four. The 24-year-old petty officer was among the first Seabees to land in Iraq, where her unit built bridges and roads for soldiers and supplies.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer