The Road to Safwan: The 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry in the 1991 ...

Task Force Iron 103
and watch his subordinates. But the B Troop commander knew
he had to and would keep this exchange in the back of his mind
for the remainder of the campaign. That discussion says a great
deal about the climate of the squadron: the young officer felt
comfortable confronting his commander, and the captain was
mature enough to listen and agree.
By the afternoon of February 17, LTG Franks was concerned
about the task force’s activity north of the border. He ordered
Rhame to reposition it to the southern side of the berm the following
morning and observe the cuts without being quite as
provocative. As if to confirm the wisdom of his order, that night
an American vehicle lost its way, crossing in front of the task
force’s line. At first, it appeared to be an Iraqi reconnaissance
vehicle and only good fire discipline by vehicle commanders
prevented a repetition of the previous night’s mishap. The next
morning Task Force Iron returned to the south side of the border
and conducted a rearward passage of lines through the 1st
and 2nd Brigades, which had taken up defensive positions behind
Task Force Iron. The squadron passage points and lanes
were through COL Maggart’s 1st Brigade. As the squadron began
moving back through the 1st Brigade, it used D Troop with
a mix of C/D Troop scout weapons teams to screen its activities.
While CPT Roy Peters, the D Troop Commander, was talking
on the radio trying to direct a new scout-weapons team
into position, he noticed a couple of explosions in the distance.
As he continued talking, he watched a few more explosions,
each approaching closer to his position. Realizing that his
group had been spotted, probably by Iraqi radio intercepts, he
decided to move. After he flew his helicopter a few kilometers
south, Iraqi artillery hit the ground where he had only recently
been hovering. 28
A short while later, as A Troop was completing its rearward
passage of lines, the squadron flight operations received a distress
call from a scout-weapons team: its OH-58C scout helicopter,
with 1LT Tom Schwartz (an attached pilot from Ft. Hood)
and SPC Steven Dunn, had crashed. The first fear, fueled by the
pilot’s distress call, was that it was downed by hostile fire. Since
the aircraft was downed in the sector previously occupied by A
Troop, CPT Philbrick immediately contacted CPT Pope and