CHANTHABURI, Kingdom of Thailand– On February 8, 2024, Marines with Marine Wing Support Squadron (MWSS) 171 traveled from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni to the small Ban Prakaet Village in Chanthaburi Thailand to build a school. The Marines would go on to spend a month staying at a nearby temple, eating, sleeping and working alongside their counterparts in the Royal Thai Marine Corps and Singaporean Army. They would also sow seeds of friendship with the local village members and students, who would greet them every morning with smiles brighter than the hot Thailand sun that would beam upon them for the next month.

Marines with MWSS 171, Marine Aircraft Group 12, were in Thailand to participate in Joint Exercise Cobra Gold as part of the continued civic action and humanitarian assistance program (ENCAP). Their specific ENCAP project was to build an auditorium at the Ban Prakaet School in Chanthaburi Provenance, Thailand.

Cobra Gold is a Thailand and United States co-sponsored joint multilateral exercise conducted annually throughout Thailand that aims to build on the long-standing friendship between the allied nations and brings together a powerful multinational force in the spirit of partnership. This year the exercise was held from February 27th to March 10th.

The exercise is made up of ten main participants including, Thailand, United States, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia with 20 more nations participating in supporting roles. Multinational service members from across the globe come together annually to train, share individual expertise and grow stronger relationships during exercises such as Cobra Gold. The exercise has a strong emphasis on coordination of readiness, civic action and humanitarian assistance, and is made up of many different types of training. Those range from amphibious landings to jungle warfare training, to construction projects.

“MWSS-171s role in Cobra Gold is being part of the ENCAP team, which is an engineering civil assistance program,” explains 2nd Lt. Sterling Howell, a combat engineer officer and the officer in charge of the Marines at site 5. “An ENCAP project is any vertical and horizontal construction. In our case it was building an auditorium for the school.”

Marines with MWSS-171 arrived at the Ban Prakaet Village, in Chanthaburi Province Thailand, in the first week of February and after meeting with their partners from the Royal Thai Marine Corps Construction Company of Combat Engineers and members of the 30th Battalion, Singapore Combat Engineers, immediately kicked off construction.

The Ban Prakaet School is an elementary school that teaches students from kindergarten to fifth grade and has seventy students from ages three to twelve. The school has ten staff members and teachers that accommodate everything at the school, from the teaching and administration to cooking and cleaning.

“By building this auditorium, these kids get more of an opportunity to diversify their knowledge, before this point they don’t have any place for them to perform arts,” explained Howell. “We’re giving them something so they can have a better future.”

Marines with MWSS-171, along with their Thai and Singaporean counterparts built the auditorium from the ground up. When arriving at the site it was just a small plot of land, and now less than a month later there is a brand-new building fully equipped with working bathrooms and air conditioning.

“The most rewarding aspect of working on this project is watching the school go up step by step and seeing the progress,” said Howell. “We went from two holes in the ground to a full auditorium within 3 weeks.”

This newly built auditorium is an environment that will benefit the whole community in numerous ways by offering a new space for learning and to come together. Not only for students and teachers to come together but also family, friends and neighbors. The Ban Prakaet Village is a close knit one that is built around family values and supporting each other. This Auditorium offers a place for them to be able to celebrate life accomplishments and to spend more time together comfortably.

“The building will have three purposes. The first is special activity classes for the kids, the second is as a meeting room for the staff, and the third is likely to be used for the community,” said Miss Tanomsi Taipaibun, the director of the Ban Prakaet school. “They will be able to use it however they want to use it, for weddings and other types of community gatherings. But mostly it is for special activities.”

The Ban Prakaet community had been immensely supportive and involved in the project showing support throughout the construction. Men from the village came out and helped lay bricks for the building and many of the teachers and other women from the village frequently came out to the site bringing lunch and cold drinks for the Marines and Soldiers doing manual labor in the hot sun.

“They all work really hard!” said Taipaibun explaining her experience with the different service members. “We see the Thai Marines, and they work very hard and are super helpful. Singaporeans are so nice, they smile a lot, and understand Thai culture. And lastly Americans are so strong! But all of them worked so hard and got the job done perfectly!”

The newly built auditorium is located on the school campus, only a few meters away from the classrooms where the students attend daily classes. This was a prime opportunity for local kids to interact with the multinational service members at the construction site on a daily basis.

“The students love all of them,” said Taipaibun. “They always come in talking about their favorite new friends.”

On top of forming friendships with students of the Ban Prakaet School, the Marines also worked closely and formed relationships with members of the Royal Thai Marine Corps and the Singaporean Army.

“My experience working with the Thai’s and Singaporeans has been absolutely wonderful,” said Howell. “I have learned so much, it’s been great working with them.”

Included in the Marines from MWSS-171 are six combat engineers who had the opportunity to teach and learn technical skills from their fellow engineers with the Singaporean Army and the Royal Thai Marines.

“One of the most challenging aspects of working with partner nations can be getting over the initial language barrier,” said Howell.

However, as the days passed and the service members worked together more and more, they learned that you don’t have to speak the same language to understand each other.

“We can all work together efficiently even though we don’t speak the same language, we bond and form relations through our work ethics,” said Howell.

In three weeks, Marines with MWSS-171 had not only built an auditorium from the ground up, but also solidified lasting relationships with students, partner militaries and the entire community.

“We are so glad all of these people have come here to help build the school!” said Taipaibun. “We can’t wait for all of the sun the students will have here.”