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From Cuba To The
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Cape Fear; Colonel Finds A Home In Carolina
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BY ERIC CARLSON
His name appears on thousands of long, technical
(some would say boring) documents about chan
nel dredging, flood plain management, stream
bank erosion and cost/benefit analysis.
He is the local district manager for an agency of the
U.S. Government known for its careful, methodical
(some would say glacial) planning, permitting and con
struction of public works projects.
So most folks probably assume that the new
Wilmington District Engineer for the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers is some nondescript, pencil-pushing bureau
crat who spent his career behind dozens of tidy little
desks in dozens of drab little offices.
And they would be wrong. Because Col. George
Cajigal (pronounced Ka-HEE-gal) has been around. And
he has some great stories to tell.
Like about the time his engineering battalion parachut
ed with tons of equipment and materials into a remote
corner of Honduras where the only roads led across the
border into hostile Nicaragua. There was only one way
for Cajigal and his men to get out: By building an airstrip
where planes could land and evacuate them.
"It was a big motivater," Cajigal said with the soft
spoken modesty of a man who seems confident that his
record speaks for itself.
He saw Cuba torn apart by revolution. He was in
Germany during the Cold War. He did a tour in Vietnam.
He was among a handful of U.S. Army officers stationed
in Peru when its military still relied on Soviet advisers. It
was a tense atmosphere, where Maoist guerrillas regular
ly set off bombs in the capitol of Lima.
When our national attention turned to Central
America, Army units under Cajigal's command were
sent on "training missions" aimed at discouraging the
Marxist Sandinistas from expanding their influence be
yond Nicaragua. After the ouster of Panamanian dictator
Manuel Noriega, Cajigal joined the Army's engineering
staff on the Panama Canal Commission.
Nowadays, as commander of its Wilmington District
Engineers, Cajigal oversees the Army's civil works activ
ities throughout a massive watershed extending from
Brunswick County to Roanoke, Va., and from Cape
Hatteras to Asheville. It's an assignment he requested,
because it brought him back to the state he considers
home.
Which might seem unusual, since Cajigal was born in
Havana, Cuba. That was in 1946, when the Caribbean's
largest island nation offered a friendly investment cli
mate for U.S. industries and an exciting vacation atmos
phere for American tourists. All that changed while
Cajigal was a child in military school. He remembers
tensions increasing as the newspapers tilled with ac
counts of rebel forces fighting in the mountains.
In the uneasy days after Fidel Castro won control of
his country, Cajigal was part of a youth honor guard that
welcomed United States representatives to Havana for
negotiations that would decide the fate of Cuba's rela
tionship with its powerful neighbor.
"I have vivid memories of the day the talks broke
down and the Americans left," he said. "Everything
changed after that."
Cajigal's father was an American-educated mechani
cal engineer for a U.S. textile firm. When his company
was nationalized by the Castro regime, George, age 14,
and his 10-year-old brother were put on a plane to
Florida. They left Cuba as "tourists" and were given po
litical asylum in the U.S.
With only "about 75 cents between us." Cajigal re
members staying in a church with his brother and grand
mother while his mother arranged for the family to move
in with an uncle in Hialeah. There they waited until his
father was able to slip out of Cuba and join them.
Cajigal's father took a job with a textile firm in
Sylacauga, Alabama, where George began the transition
from Cuban refugee to American teenager.
"It was one of the greatest experiences of my life," he
said. "I went from a highly-charged atmosphere of
bombing attacks and revolution ? where my classmates
were being killed or disappearing ? to a place where the
top priorities were high school football and meeting girls.
"I fell right into it!" he said.
After a couple years, Cajigal's father went to work
with the Enka Corporation in the Blue Ridge Mountains
of western North Carolina. George graduated from Enka
High School and later earned a political science degree at
Western Carolina University in Cullowhee.
Drafted into the Army infantry in 1968, Cajigal as
r
STAFF PHOTO BY ERIC CARLSON
COL. GEORGE CAJ1GAL is the new commander of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, Wilmington District, which includes nearly all of North Carolina and
south central Virginia. The alpaca fur rug on his office wall is a memento of his days as an adviser to the Peruvian Army.
sumed he was destined for a combat unit in the jungles of
Vietnam.
"1 thought my tombstone would look better with 'lieu
tenant' in front of my name, so 1 applied for OCS (officer
candidate school)," he said.
Cajigal was accepted into the program and was pleas
antly surprised to find that the Army needed civil engi
neers more than college-educated infantrymen. So he
was assigned to the Corps of Engineers.
After graduating from OCS, Cajigal served as a pla
toon leader in the 502nd Engineer Company at
Karlsruhe, Germany. There, in the constant military ma
neuvering to "protect us against the Russian hordes,"
Cajigal's unit installed floating bridges to carry NATO
troops and equipment across the rivers of Europe.
As a logistics officer with the Da Nang Support
Command, Cajigal spent from 1971 to 1972 supervising
the pullout of tanks, transport vehicles and mountains of
equipment during the Army's initial withdrawal from
Vietnam.
His combat tour completed, Cajigal wanted to get
back to the East Coast, so he asked for an assignment in
Washington. The request was approved. But they sent
him to the wrong Washington. He was assigned to the
864th Engineering Battalion at Fort Lewis, on the Puget
Sound near Seattle.
Cajigal finally made it back East and began what he
calls "a love affair with Fort Bragg." In the first of sever
al assignments there, he learned to jump from airplanes
and commanded a company in an airborne combat engi
neering battalion. The Army sent him to N.C. State
University for a master's degree, then assigned him to an
Army Engineering School, where he taught other officers
how to build roads and airfields.
The early 1980s brought a shift in the Soviet/
American power struggle in South America. After 12
years under a Communist-leaning dictatorship, the gov
ernment of Peru was returned to a democratically-elected
president who wanted to improve relations with the
United States.
Cajigal, with his fluency in Spanish and his experience
in military engineering, was one of four American ex
change officers sent to Lima as instructors to the
Peruvian Army, which still relied on Soviet equipment
and the logistical support of about 250 Soviet military
advisers.
"Professionally, it was a very challenging assignment,"
Cajigal said. "And at times very exciting."
Adding to the intrigue were the well-armed hands of
"Shining Path" guerrillas that fought to drive both super
powers out of Peru and were blamed for more than
13.000 deaths in the 1980s. As a precaution against ter
rorist attacks, Cajigal was advised to wear civilian cloth
ing and to carry a pistol whenever he ventured onto the
streets of Lima.
The American advisers found themselves even more
alienated from their Peruvian hosts when the two coun
tries chose opposite sides in the war between England
and Argentina over the Falkland Islands.
"I was in their ministry of war building ? the equiva
lent of our Pentagon ? when (U.S. Secretary of State) A!
Haig came on television and announced our support for
Great Britain," Cajigal said. "[ was escorted out of the
building and told not to come back unless invited. Those
were tough times."
Returning to Fort Bragg in 1984, Cajigal took com
mand of the 27th Airborne Combat Engineering
Battalion. Twice his unit was deployed to Honduras for
"military exercises." On one of those occasions, his was
the only American combat unit the country when
stepped-up Nicaraguan insurgences led U.S. intelligence
agencies to fear that the Sandinistas were preparing to in
vade.
His experience in Central American affairs earned
Cajigal admission to the Inter-American Defense College
in Washington. D.C.. which took him on official visits to
every country in the region (except Nicaragua). He was
later chosen as a military adviser to the Panama Canal
Commission for public works.
Before returning to North Carolina in July, Cajigal
spent two years as civil works adviser to the Assistant
Secretary of the Army at the Pentagon.
Cajigal said he welcomes the Wilmington assignment
and the challenge of supervising Army Corps activities in
such a diverse district, where projects range from the
dredging of coastal inlets to the installation of flood
control dams on mountain streams. He said this may be
his last assignment with the Army and hinted that he
might consider retiring to the area.
"It's like they say. I like calling North Carolina
home."
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