After just ten days on the job, Bermuda Regiment volunteers in Grand Cayman have made a "colossal impact" on hurricane relief efforts in a working class neighbourhood.

They started work on Monday on an area known as Swamp, the second of five low-income neighbourhoods they were asked to focus on by the Government there.

Windsor Park, the first to be tackled, has been radically transformed from a community on the verge of a public health crisis, to a liveable community.

"They've done extremely well, they've been magnificent," said Governor Bruce Dinwiddy who paid a lunchtime visit to the troops on Monday.

"I'm enormously grateful and, yes, I would have hoped we would have been able to arrange just a few of those more quickly, but it takes a while to get deployed. But it's the individuals that we must absolutely thank and their employers and the Government because, as you've seen, they've made a colossal impact.

"This was a terrific gesture by them as individuals and by Bermuda towards the Cayman Islands and it would reinforce the good ties that exist between the two territories."

For their part, the soldiers report an experience that they will not likely forget in a hurry.

Windsor Park, like the other neighbourhoods, is populated primarily by Jamaican guest workers, most of whom are poor and working class. Piles of debris, and dozens of sceptical locals, greeted the soldiers when they started clean-up duty there last week.

Hurricane Ivan's floods had caused most of the damage inside the houses, forcing residents to discard most of their belongings. The flood waters were about three to four feet high in some cases, backed up cesspits and became contaminated with human waste.

Left with little choice, many residents were forced to go to the bathroom in plastic bags, dubbed "magic bags" by the soldiers, and leave them on the roadsides with other garbage and debris.

Driving through Windsor Park on Friday, the strong smell of human waste would occasionally waft through the air, and the Island-wide power failure Ivan added to the assault on the senses with the scent of three and a half week old rotten food.

"The first day everybody was miserable, down in the dumps and upset. But by the third day everybody seemed happier - it wasn't stinking as much," explained Lance Corporal Little.

"By the end of the week people were waving at us in the street, we were getting shout-outs on the radio. That's the best part of the trip so far - seeing everybody happy."

The soldiers were puzzled and disappointed at the initial reaction of the locals - few bothered to help and some even started ordering them to clean up their yards. Lance Corporal Whitter described that response as "very frustrating".

"I will never take for granted the sense of community we have in Bermuda, he said. "It's been a little rough to get that community support. It's slowly coming around."

But most soldiers in the end were forgiving and put it down to the trauma of one of the worst hurricanes in Cayman's history.

"I'd say there's a lot of apathy," said Lance Corporal Starling. "It could be shock because this country was devastated. It could be shock and they just don't know where to begin. When we start cleaning the piles of stuff we see, I don't know where to begin.

"We just start picking things up and chucking them in the road. But I mean you've got trash bags that's been sitting up for three weeks."

"People lost everything," explained another soldier. "You don't want people that you don't even know coming into your house and telling you everything that you have is trash, that you've collected throughout your whole life and you don't even know this guy.

"But the longer we are here it's turning around completely, everywhere you go there's people coming out of their house and offering you something to drink.

"Another soldier said that it was kind of difficult hearing somebody saying that their brand new BMW was taken out of their driveway and taken down the road and was brought back to their driveway by the ocean, by water.

"It makes me glad we've got some nice hills in the environment."

Residents appeared somewhat shy and reticent when The Royal Gazette turned up in the neighbourhood on Sunday. But they all expressed their gratitude for the volunteers. And at Swamp, where most people had no idea the Bermudians were coming, a local church minister said simply: "That's good. We love them, we need the help."

One woman, a nursing assistant positively beamed when given the news.

"Really? That's wonderful. That's really wonderful."

The soldiers will return to Bermuda, counting their blessings and retelling dozens of unbelievable Hurricane Ivan stories - all teaching the same lesson: never take anything for granted.

Leader of Government Business McKeeva Bush, who recently returned from a trip to the UK to ask for assistance, said he was "really appreciative of the care and concern spoken and written from the people of Bermuda".

Mr. Bush noted that he had had a long association with Bermuda parliamentarians.