Camp Warhorse Baqubah

Camp Warhorse Baqubah was my first base in Iraq.

I was at Anaconda for three days, living in a fifty man tent, freezing every night. It did nothing but rain, rain, and rain some more.

One night I woke up and there was an extreme smell of exhaust coming into our tent. So I got up and walked over to the generator outside about 100 feet away. Before I got to it I could tell it was not running correctly. It had all sorts of red warning lights showing.

So I went to the ops center and told the guy on duty. He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and went back to reading his book. It was not his problem. I felt like grabbing him by the collar and slapping him to knock some sense into him. But he was not the last person I ran into who had the "I could care less attitude" in Iraq. All this time, the rain continued to pour down.

So I decided to shut the generator down myself. People were going to get hurt if it was not turned off. Puddles of water were everywhere around the generator. As I stepped up to the generator, I stepped into one that was a foot deep.

I was not sure how to turn the generator off but I found a button that said, "Emergency Shut Down." So I pushed it. Nothing. Then I pulled it and the generator shut down. A lot of people have no clue how close they came to CO2 poisioning. And I probably saved the company a lot of money in lawsuits.

The next day the supervisor came up to me and said, "I have some good news and some bad news."

So I said, "What is the bad news?" "Well", he started, "I need someone to go to Camp Warhorse Baqubah. I need a materials guy there. There is no one there since the team on the ground has only been there a short time." He told me I would be starting from scratch and there were very few supplies on hand.

(He was not kidding. When I arrived at Camp Warhorse Baqubah, there were two connexes of supplies and most of this was in sad shape. When I left, I had 125 connexes full of materials and equipment. I had set up the material operations, the warehouse operations and the tool room operations.)

This did not sound too bad to me but then he gave the catch, "By the way, the base is nicknamed Baquaboom because it is hit almost everyday with mortars or rockets."

"What is the good news?," I asked.

"Well they have their own rooms."

I replied, "When do I go?"

"Can you be ready in thirty minutes?"

"You betcha."

So I packed my bags and was picked up by the drivers. There were five of us going. We met up with the military convoy and headed for Camp Warhorse Baqubah.

We arrived around 4 pm and were given rooms. The rooms were nice but there was no running water. It was still better than where I had been at Anaconda.

They took us to the defac and we had several meetings. That night around 7 pm, we were having our security briefing when three mortars hit the compound. We headed for the bunkers and were there for about 30 minutes. We found out later that two soldiers had been killed. They were not even from our base but attending a meeting. Several days later, I met a gentleman by the name of Glen Taniguchi who had the call sign of Electrical One. We became fast friends and started a morning prayer meeting. Every morning we would meet and pray.

For the next sixteen months, our camp only lost one soldier and two injured due to mortar attack. I think it was because of the prayers. Later, Tommy Manness, call sign Generator One, also joined our group.

Any way Camp Warhorse Baqubah was a small camp. The Big Red One was there for most of the time I was. They were a good group of people and really friendly. We use to invite the mayor cell and his people to join us for our BBQ s. We were a family at Camp Warhorse since we were a small group of workers. But then the family grew and we lost that family atmosphere.

When I left, Warhorse had no fast food, but a coffee shop. They had a nice new gym and a good MWR where you could watch DVD's, use the phone to call home and use the computer for e-mail and so on. They had a ton of books and even had a weight and workout room.

Our carpenters built a room inside the old gym that served as the workout area. They did not just build a room but put some pride into it and made it with a western accent. Their highlight was the making of the sports bar. It was really great.

There was a theater which our carpenters also put together on the inside. This was a proud moment for our company. They really did an outstanding job. They built the bleachers, put in the walls and built the snack bar.

There were many improvements at Camp Warhorse Baqubah made by our company. I had pictures, but they were lost when my hard drive crashed. Efforts to try and get some from others who were there have proved futile.

For more information and pictures about Camp Warhorse click here.

Thank you for your visit.

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