James Lee / Special to The Star Seabee Builder Utilityman Rouel Agustin sits alongside a newly constructed hut that will house a contingent of U.S. Marines.

CAMP RAMADI, Iraq — Rouel Agustin, a Seabee builder utilityman from Oxnard, doesn't let his mind drift too much to what he misses about home.

"Maybe a cold beer," said the 24-year-old, who oversees a small crew of builders who spent the last month framing three plywood huts set behind thick concrete blast walls.

Because temperatures surge as high as 140 degrees during the day — the type of heat that evaporates sweat before it even drips, leaving a salty film on the skin — the builders worked on the hut roofs at night.

Despite the working conditions, Agustin finds this duty much better than the last time he was here, in 2005.

"It's safer now," he said. "We feel more confident. You don't have to worry all the time that you're going to get hit. We got mortars and rounds fired in here all the time (back then)."

Agustin, who grew up in the Philippines, moved to Oxnard five years ago to live with his uncle, Nicasio Arucan. Before joining the Navy, he attended Oxnard College. He decided to enlist after one of his cousins, who is also in the Navy, showed him around Naval Base Ventura County, Port Hueneme.

Agustin thought he could get stationed there and still live with his uncle.

That was three years ago. Agustin's crew in Iraq is young, some just coming out of basic Seabee training. But they seem to roll with the problems that pop up, everything from inferior Iraqi plywood that buckles and warps easily, to working 14 hours a day in intense heat.

The crew is finishing huts — near a large berm not too far from the banks of the Euphrates River — that will be used by a contingent of Marines. They come equipped with air conditioning to provide a cool escape.

"It feels good to be doing something for my fellow countrymen, to make their lives easier, and it's something you can point to," Agustin said.

One of his crew, Construction Engineer Jacquelyn Vetters, an intense 26-year-old who has operated one of the big guns on the top of an MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle) for convoy security, said the building work provides different kinds of rewards.

But she liked when she went out beyond "the wire," racking up miles and miles of time on the road traveling from base to base.

"It opened my eyes," she said.

"It's real, you know. You see a lot of things you never are going to forget, maybe you wished you didn't see."