Camp Buehring
Camp Udairi, 15 miles from the Iraq border, has served as the staging and training base for tens of thousands of Iraq-bound troops. Since opening in January, 2003, it has been a busy hub for Army Apache, Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Army’s permanent aviation base camp in Kuwait has been renamed in memory of an officer who died in a rocket attack last fall on the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in Baghdad. In a brief ceremony attended by about 50 people on 08 May 2004, Camp Udairi was renamed Camp Buehring in honor of Lt. Col. Charles H. “Chad” Buehring, who had been the senior psychological operations officer in Iraq at the time of his death. A monument and plaque memorializing Buehring were dedicated as part of the event.
Buehring, 40, of Winter Springs, Fla., was a 1985 graduate of The Citadel and served 18 years in the Army, according to a biography posted on the Web site www.arlingtoncemetery.net. He served in the U.S. Army Special Forces and had been working with Iraqi media in Baghdad to publicize the work of coalition troops.
Buehring was killed Oct. 26, 2003, when a guerrilla’s rocket struck his 11th floor room at the Al Rasheed Hotel, home to many officers and soldiers who work at CPA headquarters. He was buried three weeks later at Arlington National Cemetery in a funeral attended by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who had been staying one floor above Buehring at the hotel when the attack occurred.
Camp Buehring is a US Army facility set in the Kuwait desert that is packed with morale and recreation facilities that could rival some US bases. For all the benefits here though, Camp Buehring is still a desert camp, far from home and the friends and families of these Marines and Sailors. A fully-stocked exchange, several phone centers, an internet café, a coffee house, gym facilities, Burger King and a 24-hour Pizza Inn are just a few of the amenities here topping the Marines’ “favorites list.”
However the one favorite nearly everyone agrees on is the dining facility where meals like steak and lobster are not uncommon. The chow-hall, as the Marines call it, is one of the largest facilities on the camp and is capable of serving several thousand troops at every meal. Though the line nearly always extends several hundred feet beyond the entrance, six fast-moving food lines ensure the Marines and Sailors never wait to long to eat.
But services at Camp Buehring obviously go well beyond these basics. Marines enjoy the video-chat services offered at the Internet Café. For five dollars an hour, a Marine can get a computer with a high-speed connection, a webcam and headphones and then connect with a friend or loved one at home, providing they have the same capability.
A unique challenge to Camp Buehring’s surge-related activities is its distinction as one of Kuwait’s few enduring camps, meaning it’s slated to sustain operations for many years. This forces the camp’s command cell staff to continue big picture operations, such as completing important infrastructure upgrades, while still maintaining the camp’s immediate role as one of Kuwait’s largest transient camps.
Heavy-equipment transporters loaded with M1-A1 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles sat in about a dozen single-file lines on a sandy staging area 23 October 2004 at Camp Buehring, Kuwait. An array of 30 or 40 more vehicles dotted the horizon, awaiting the rest of the trucks slated to carry them into battle.
The 256th Brigade Combat Team, sometimes called the “Tiger Brigade,” is the first unit in the third rotation of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Dubbed OIF ’04-’06 by the Pentagon to mark the years the first and last units of the rotation respectively deploy and redeploy, this installment is a leap forward, officials said, in the complex reception, staging and onward integration, or RSOI process of units passing through Kuwait on their trip up north.
Most Soldiers with the 256th, an enhanced separate brigade made up of various Louisiana National Guard units and select Guard units from New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota and other places, were probably unaware of the problems with past OIF rotations. They weren’t around for the long lines, broken cots and other inconveniences that plagued the troops who came before them. They are, however, the first beneficiaries of a number of improvements affecting troops making the transition from Kuwait to Iraq.
The Soldiers lauded the camp’s air-conditioned billets and generous portions of food served up at the dining facility. Staff Sgt. Stanley Shavers Jr., a 256th tank commander, even joked that the unit’s time in Kuwait has been a little too easy.
Hull Technicians from USS Emory S. Land (AS 39 ) joined forces with their Army counterparts in Kuwait to up-armor combat vehicles in January 2005. The 15 Sailors volunteered to assist the Army in the pre-cutting of ballistic steel sheets fashioned into doors and panels and other parts to up-armor vehicles, primarily High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs).
