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

138 The Road to Safwan
oped a series of waypoints to keep them on line. He ended the
meeting as promptly as possible so that his subordinates could
develop their own plans. 9
It was a cold night, with almost no visibility because of the
rain and overcast skies, making standard night-vision goggles
almost useless. The squadron began repositioning shortly after
midnight. To keep from bumping into each other, vehicle commanders
used their thermal imagery sights and watched the
black-out drive lights on those vehicles in front. The drivers and
vehicle commanders were also exhausted and often fell asleep
in their seats whenever their column stopped. There were also
minor collisions and the normal array of maintenance problems.
Lieutenant Dave Palmieri’s Bradley, for example, dislocated its
track from its drive sprocket (called “throwing” a track) just as
he was receiving the fragmentary order over the radio from CPT
Pope. He had to change to his platoon sergeant’s vehicle and
leave his behind for repairs after first light. The ground was still
dangerous with scattered unexploded munitions. This was just
one more worry for Pope who was increasingly concerned
about 1SGT Parkey, who had not returned from his mission of
finding A Troop’s missing vehicles and he realized that Parkey
would have to catch up on his own. 10
It was no easier for the squadron’s logistics units. Captains
Harmon and Morrison, each leading a portion of the combat
trains, were attempting to find each other in the dark. They were
arguing with each other over the radio and voicing their frustrations
over the squadron command frequency for all to hear. Wilson
finally intervened and ordered them off his frequency and
told them to continue their conversation on the squadron administrative-logistics
net. Ultimately, without further broadcasting
their confusion, they found each other in the dark.
Meanwhile CPT Mark Johnson, the squadron motor officer,
was busy leading the maintenance section toward the line of
departure and found the going very difficult. As other unit convoys
rolled through the area, some sleepy soldiers suddenly
awoke and mistakenly tried moving their vehicles to join the
wrong unit. In one well-remembered example, the motor officer
was on the ground ensuring that all the vehicles were present
when one of the squadron’s M88 Recovery Vehicles sud-