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

150 The Road to Safwan
platoon occupied its portion of the line by conducting a zone reconnaissance
to clear a zone between it and the division to the
south. Bills’s command occupied its portion of the screen line
without incident. 50 Captain Pope’s A Troop encountered Iraqis
as it moved into position and the troop’s Bradleys destroyed an
ammunition truck, a few other vehicles, and several supply
tents, arriving on its sector sometime after midnight. Shortly after
B Troop established their screen line, CPT Bills began to get
reports of vehicle movement to their front. He gave the order to
engage the enemy vehicles as they appeared. Based upon what
he monitored on the squadron command net, Bills began to get
the uneasy feeling that they might be in an Iraqi kill zone. This
highlighted a problem with operating at night. The Iraqis dug
their positions into the ground. The bunkers were constructed
so that only about the top eighteen to twenty-four inches
showed above the ground. The vehicle positions were dug in
with low berms covering them on three sides. Even with the
thermal sights it was often difficult to pick out the vehicles that
were in those positions at night. If the positions were properly
prepared and occupied you might not see the enemy vehicles
until you were very close to them. In the midst of all of this activity
it soon became apparent that the two troops did not have
physical contact with each other. A gap of a couple of unobserved
kilometers lay between the two cavalry units. 51
Once the 1st Infantry Division Tactical Command Post colocated
with the 2nd Cavalry’s headquarters shortly after 2230
hours, MAJ Burdan received permission to return to his unit,
arriving at the squadron’s tactical command post around 0130
hours. On the way back to his unit, he saw the tracers and explosions
of the division’s ongoing battle several kilometers to
the south. When he arrived at the TOC, he found it operating
in a ramp-up configuration without tent extensions and configured
for rapid movement. He walked over to the S3 M577
and tugged open the door. There he found the two watch officers
asleep, with microphones in their hands and heads resting
on the map boards. He noticed a HMMWV next to the command
post and found MAJ Wimbish. The XO said that everyone
was dead tired and that he was monitoring the situation
while they caught a quick nap. He had seen Burdan drive up