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

170 The Road to Safwan
tion on the right, or eastern, side of the road. Moving down a
low ridgeline, the cavalry attack caught the Iraqis by surprise.
One T-55 tank tried to traverse its gun towards the attackers,
but an American M1A1 tank destroyed it before the Iraqi ever
completed its turn. In the northern part of the troop’s sector, 1st
Platoon’s SSG Gerald Broennimann destroyed the lead Iraqi armored
vehicle in the middle of the highway. 2LT Copenhaver,
the 1st Platoon leader, detected a tank about 500 meters away
moving northward. He stopped his Bradley, raised his TOW
launcher and destroyed it with a TOW missile. SFC Molitor detected
a tank on a ridgeline in the distance and fired a TOW at
it. He controlled the missile from the track commander’s position.
He thought he was going to miss the tank and then he saw
the impact and explosion and the tank disappeared below the
ridgeline. 27 With the road now blocked, Pope ordered the two
cavalry platoons to continue attacking across the road to the
northeast and join his tank platoon in a sweep through the objective.
The roar was deafening as the cavalrymen assaulted
through the disorganized Iraqi positions. 2LT Osburn, 2nd Platoon
Leader, found that he had to pay close attention to the location
of all of the troop vehicles in order to avoid firing at
friendly vehicles. SFC Molitor saw Iraqi soldiers everywhere.
As his Bradley rolled northward as part of the attack, his driver
saw some soldiers jump into a stationary T-55. The tank started
to traverse its turrent toward them. Molitor again stopped his
vehicle, raised the launcher and destroyed the T-55 with another
TOW round. When the troop had finished its attack, they
left behind a dozen Iraqi vehicles in flames and now had several
dozen enemy soldiers under guard. All the platoon’s vehicles
were operational with the exception of one M1A1 that had
run into a mine field and sustained some slight damage. Fortunately,
the tank could continue with the troop and would not
have to be replaced until after the war. 28
While B Troop’s sector remained fairly quiet, A Troop’s activity
on the Basra Highway now became increasingly intense.
As CPT Pope finished his initial engagement, he could see large
numbers of Iraqi soldiers and vehicles heading towards him
from the south and east. He dispatched 2LT Jim Copenhaver’s
1st Platoon, with its six Bradleys, to the troop’s southern flank to