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

164 The Road to Safwan
lier in the morning as they worked to repair vehicles and return
them to their unit. At approximately 1300 hours they moved
through an Iraqi position that they originally thought was unoccupied.
However, as they drove through it, several Iraqis
came out to surrender. Harmon halted his unit and searched
the soldiers to take away their weapons. In the course of searching
the bunkers they ran across several wounded Iraqis. MAJ
Roger Hanson, the squadron surgeon, and 2LT Nathan Butler,
the Medical Platoon Leader, with the help of the other medics
traveling with the trains, treated the wounded. CPT Harmon
flagged down some passing ground ambulances from 4-5 Artillery
and directed them to the bunkers. They loaded the
wounded Iraqi soldiers and evacuated them to the rear. The
combat trains then continued to the east following behind the
ground troops. 13
Franks expected Rhame’s armor to be on the objective by
nightfall. With the highway cut from the south, the corps commander
would have the southern portion of his double envelopment
complete and be well on the way to destroying the remaining
Republican Guards units located farther to the north.
Rhame promised Franks in a transmission over the division
command net that he would reach Denver before the day
ended. Bob Wilson, listening to Franks and Rhame talking, had
no question as to the importance of his unit’s mission. 14
The division attack, however, did not go as planned. The
2nd Brigade moved forward more slowly than anticipated, coordinated
through 1-4 Cavalry with the 3rd Armored Division
on its left flank while passing the 1st Brigade to its right, and
destroying several platoons of Iraqi armor. The 1st Brigade,
now in the division’s center, ran into a fire-fight as soon as it began
moving past the 2nd Brigade. Meanwhile, the 3rd Brigade
working on the division’s right flank was also in contact with
Iraqi defenders. Therefore, for a short time, the division’s three
brigades were on-line and all involved in several small battles
with platoon-sized groups of Iraqi tanks. While there was little
serious Iraqi resistance, it complicated and delayed the American
movement. 15
In addition, the division was now fighting through these
isolated Iraqi defenses in the worst terrain the Big Red One had