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

146 The Road to Safwan
cated there. The helicopter attack continued the pressure on the
Iraqi commander and his artillery, preventing him from interfering
with the 1st Infantry’s passage of lines.
By 2230 five heavy battalions and the Quarter Horse had
passed through the 2nd Cavalry and advanced onto their objective.
As the 1st Infantry Division took control of the sector, the
210th Field Artillery Brigade added its reinforcing fires to the
1st Infantry Divisions artillery. 30 In the 1st Brigade sector, LTC
Patrick Ritter’s 1st Battalion, 34th Armor, a pure M1A1 battalion
led by its Bradley-mounted scouts, moved through the single
passage lane. Soon after passing the 2nd Cavalry’s positions,
it ran into a battalion of the 18th Mechanized Brigade. 31
Iraqi gunners destroyed two of the American reconnaissance
vehicles, probably silhouetted against the fires of burning Iraqi
vehicles. Ritter immediately pulled his scouts back and moved
his tank companies forward. These Iraqis intended to fight, unlike
those encountered by the Americans in the breach. 32
LTC Gregory Fontenot’s Task Force 2-34 Armor followed
Ritter’s tanks through the passage lane. As Fontenot’s four
companies moved through the lane, the two northern units
strayed off their axis and began moving north, rather than
east. 33 With all the postwar celebration of technology, commanders
on M1A1 tanks still had no sure way of knowing in
what direction they were heading while on the move since they
had no vehicle mounted compass or navigation system. The
world’s most modern tank did not even have the old azimuth
indicator that tankers had used for years as navigation aids.
Unable to locate his two teams, and sensing they were heading
in the wrong way towards possible annihilation by the friendly
2nd Cavalry in the rear or the 3rd Armored Division in the
north, Fontenot called the leading C Team commander. After a
short radio discussion with the battalion commander, C Company’s
Captain Robert Burns jumped off his tank to determine
his actual direction of movement. Not knowing how close the
enemy was or the condition of the ground, Burns moved away
from his M1A1’s protective mass of metal and pulled out his
trusty Lensatic Compass. Quickly realizing his directional error,
he figured out his correction and returned to his tank before
taking fire, friendly or enemy. 34