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

11 Objective Norfolk
In the early morning hours of February 26, the
1st Infantry Division departed its defensive
position around the breach it had made in
the Iraqi lines forty-eight hours earlier. Racing northeast across
110 kilometers of wide-open desert, the first task of the Big Red
One would be to close up behind the 2nd Armored Cavalry
Regiment then engaged with the Tawakalna Mechanized Division.
1 The division would then pass through the cavalry regiment
and attack to the east toward a region marked on battle
maps as Objective Norfolk. 2
This objective encompassed part of the Iraqi defensive line
that they had scrambled to establish on February 25 after they
became aware of the VII Corps’s attack from the west. The Iraqi
18th Mechanized Brigade from the Tawakalna Mechanized Division
and the 37th Mechanized Brigade from the 12th Armored
Division defended this sector that contained a large
number of supply depots for units assigned along the border
and in western Kuwait. It was also the intersection of several
roads, most importantly the IPSA (Iraqi Petroleum Saudi Arabia)
pipeline road that ran northeast towards Basra. It was the
Iraqi Army’s main supply route to support units defending
along the Saudi Arabian border. 3
The 1-4 Cavalry continued to consolidate and reorganize on
PL New Jersey on February 25. Shortly after 1400 hours, word
arrived that MG Rhame wanted to see his commanders at the
division’s forward command post. At 1630 hours while Wilson
was still at the meeting, the division staff issued a warning order
for Contingency Plan Jeremiah II. This plan, which was one
of several that had been worked out by the division planners
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