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When Shawn Castro was given the opportunity to go to Iraq, he jumped at the chance.

"My whole reason for going over there was to see what's going on," said Castro, who is a civilian employee of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and works at Kinzua Dam. "It gave me a chance to get on the ground."

Castro served in the U.S. Navy during Desert Storm, but he was at sea during the conflict.

The Corps of Engineers was looking for volunteers to go to Iraq and help with infrastructure projects.

Castro signed up for six months; he left in March and returned in September.

After a week of training in Washington, D.C., Castro and a group of Corps employees took a 14-hour flight direct from Dulles Airport to the "gateway to the theatre" in Kuwait. The flight was, according to Castro, "probably one of the worst parts of the tour."

There were dangers for American civilians in Iraq.

"There was a chance of an attack and they did happen," Castro said.

In cases where there was some kind of advance notice, "there was an early warning siren. You don't have time to go anywhere, but you had time to get on the ground."

The danger was a lingering presence, but it was not at the forefront of Castro's mind.

"For the most part you feel safe," he said. "When the Army and the Marines are there, absolutely."

"Those guys are doing a phenomenal job keeping it quiet," he said of the U.S. armed forces.

But there were no guarantees.

Castro's group did not exactly travel incognito, but neither did they use the available military vehicles very often. "We were not there in a fighting capacity," Castro said. "If the situation warranted, we had the vehicles."

But, "it looked a lot less offensive if we took big trucks - SUVs."

Either way, news traveled fast. "Within a few minutes the militia knows we're there," he said. "Everybody knows for miles."

One of the changes Castro witnessed in behavior was locals informing on insurgents instead of passing information to them.

"The people are getting tired of it," he said. "The atmosphere has changed so much."

"You start to see the people starting to stand up," he said. "Women and children would point out a cache (of weapons)."

It was a change based on freedom.

"When you give somebody freedom and you try to take it away from them, they don't like that," he said. "It's a losing battle for the bad guys."

"You'd be amazed at the changes going on," Castro said.

"The number of people that are working on projects is amazing," he said. "They're not worried about insurgents. They can walk the streets, go to the market. They couldn't before."

One day, Castro witnessed a failed attempt at intimidation.

"There was a guy in Basra pushing an ice cart selling ice to people," he said.

A man with a machine gun drove up and threatened the merchant and told him to stop selling his ice, telling him "Muhammad didn't have ice."

"Two months earlier, that guy would've left his cart and run," Castro said.

Instead, he stood his ground.

"The old guy said Muhammad didn't have Datsun pickup trucks and AK-47s," Castro said.

Not all of the changes Castro witnessed were among the Iraqi citizens.

"I went as a construction rep. I was stationed down in Basra," Castro said. "It turned out I worked most of my tour as an engineer in Maysan Province."

"I ended up doing a lot of traveling across the desert," he said.

Wherever he went, Castro was in an unfamiliar position.

"I'm not an engineer," he said. "I've never been a construction rep."

"I was managing over $100 million worth of projects," Castro said. "I had never managed anything that scope of work."

He worked through it because there was nothing else to do.

"You don't have a choice but to learn," he said.

When he was wearing his construction representative hat, Castro oversaw every aspect of a project. "You teach them how to start a project from nothing to completion," he said. "They're learning everything."

A team of 12 Iraqi engineers assigned to Castro was in charge of most of the work on site. They spoke English, so there was no serious language barrier.

The dozen team members were dedicated to their country, according to Castro.

"I give the Iraqi engineers all the credit in the world," he said. "The thing with Iraq was, when they got free, the people with education took off."

Those who stayed had good reason.

"They said, 'If everybody left, my country would be nothing,'" Castro said. "They love their country. They want to succeed."

There are risks to helping Americans, even Americans who are building hospitals.

"They can't say that they work with us," Castro said. "If the wrong people find out, their families are dead."

In Basra, Castro worked at the Basra Children's Hospital - "Laura Bush's star project." The private contractor who was supposed to be in charge of the construction fled as fighting approached shortly after the work began, Castro said.

In Maysan, Castro was mostly working on a surgical hospital.

He said most Americans would be amazed at the conditions. "To go down there and see how they've lived for how many years without hospitals, roads... Under that dictatorship they were so deprived of basic necessities."

He thinks people would be even more surprised to see the degree of change. "They'd be more amazed to get there and see what's been done," he said.

Castro said the changes are happening rapidly, but a democracy won't bloom overnight. "It took us 200 years to get where we are," he said. "They just started down that road."

For six months, Castro was part of the rebuilding process that will enable Iraq to move forward.

When his tour was up, he was asked if he wanted to do another six months. There was plenty of work left.

But he had had enough. "I needed a break," he admitted.

Castro was not allowed to work more than 12 hours in a day, but he was working the maximum, seven days a week for the six months he was there.

With so much work, there wasn't much time for entertainment. That wasn't a major problem because there weren't many opportunities for entertainment for an American in Iraq. "The Army does their best to keep people occupied," Castro said. "Once a week, when we could, we'd have a little cigar night, drink safety (non-alcoholic) beer. Lots of movies."

Castro passed on the chance to come home for two weeks. "Half way through, you can fly back for 15 days," he said.

Leaving would have meant as much as one month away from his work after the "cumbersome" delays getting in and out of country. It was too much.

"When I went there, I was bound and determined to make it through six months," he said.

Besides the long days and long weeks, Castro's decision to go to Iraq was a source of stress for his father. "My dad is part of the reason I told them I was going to come back (home)," he said. "I come home and see him and it eases his mind. Next time he might not be so nervous."

That's right. Next time.

"I'll probably go again," Castro said. "I might not miss standing in 125 degree heat wearing 60 pounds of body armor, but I'll miss the people."

His team of engineers had asked him to stay. When he decided not to, they had another request.

One asked Castro to do him a favor. "If you don't do anything else, when you get home, make sure your people know the Iraqi people are not the insurgents," he told Castro.

"The major part of the Iraqi people want the same things everybody else wants," Castro said.

And the people he spoke with weren't eager for the Americans to leave. "There's definitely a worry that we're going to leave them high and dry," Castro said.