HAVING to pull staff out of Kurdistan because of the uprising of ISIS led to the semi-retirement of one Barrow granddad.

Now back at his Red Oak Avenue home, Philip Caine decided to turn his hand to writing and was surprised at just how easily it came to him.

The 65-year-old first spoke to the Evening Mail exclusively back in 2004 by satellite phone from Iraq.

At that time he was the project manager of an international company building and operating camps for US troops in five camps around Baghdad.

He faced a daily battle to survive in a city that is swarming with factions opposed to the occupation spending about five hours-a-day on the perilous streets of the city.

Mr Caine has over thirty five years’ experience, operating projects across three continents, within the oil and gas industry, providing support in facilitates & project management, to first and second tier clients, in remote and hazardous locations . He worked the pioneering years of the North Sea, for over fifteen years on oil rigs, barges and platforms, then moved to onshore projects, spending three years in North and West Africa.

Seven years were spent operating in the former Soviet Union where he managed multiple projects in Kazakhstan and Russia, again supporting the same industry|: primarily in the massive Karachaganak Field and Caspian Basin.

The end of the Iraq War in 2003 produced a change of client that took Mrt Caine to Baghdad, where, as operations director, he controlled the operations and project management, of multiple accommodation bases for the American Military. A challenging, hazardous and demanding location that required him to provide and deliver full support to the client, servicing over 30,000 troops,on nine separate locations, throughout Baghdad and northern Iraq, a major project in the world at that time that lasted almost seven years until 2009.

Mr Caine said: “After this I I was offered a job in Afghanistan but my wife said ‘you are not going there.’ But, it was just too good an opportunity to turn down. We moved to Dubai in 2010 and I set up two companies that had bases in Iraq so I was still in and out of Baghdad and Kurdistan. But it was the beginning of ISIS kicking off and there were a lot of issues in Kurdistan so I pulled everyone out. I decided to semi-retire and came back home to Holbeck. I have been doing some consulting and at the beginning of this year I joined Ulverston Writers Group with these great ladies. I decided to write about something I know. In the first few weeks I wrote the prolog and the first couple of chapters. The ladies said they loved it and within four months I had written the book.”

Mr Caine explained how he sent it off to an editor and was told it was very good and put it on Kindle last week. There will also be hard copies coming out very soon.

He added: “It’s a fictitious story about the events that happened to us. I have sent it out to a few agents and have had some positive feedback. I have also sent a manuscript to Guy Richie as people have said it would make a good film. I already have ideas for a prequel and a sequel.

“It’s not just a boys book. There’s lots of action in it. It’s fiction but a lot of what happened happened to us and the characters are based on real people I worked with.”