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

13 Safwan
By the early morning of February 28, three
days of intense combat had resulted in the
liberation of Kuwait City and the retreat of
Saddam Hussein’s troops from the small sheikdom. With the
capital and southern Kuwait in the hands of the Saudi-led Joint
Forces Commands and the U.S. Marines, the Third U.S. Army
was forcing the remaining Iraqi forces into an enclave opposite
the only crossings across the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers at
Basra. In the “Basra Pocket,” the remnants of the once imposing
Iraqi Army were in a position from which they could not, if the
Allies chose to block the withdrawal routes to the north, escape.
At 0600 hours, the 1st Infantry Division’s 1-4 Cavalry, the
northeastern-most unit in the VII Corps, came under the operational
control of COL Tony Moreno’s 2d Brigade. 1 The entire 1st
Infantry Division then lurched forward in one last move up toward
Kuwait’s northern border. As it moved north, the scene on
the Basra Highway reminded some of scenes from the Road Warrior
movies. The thick smoke of hundreds of fires from the Ar
Rawdatayn oil fields blocked the light of the slowly rising sun.
Iraqi military and civilian equipment that never made it north
littered the highway. 2 By 0800 hours the campaign was over.
LTC Bob Wilson, his staff, and commanders used the hours soon
after the cease-fire to begin to account for the dead, arrange for
the evacuation of the EPWs, and consolidate the squadron.
Gathering the dead around the squadron position was a
grisly task. The troopers saw firsthand the results of their handiwork.
Troopers pulled dead Iraqis out of their vehicles and
placed them in body bags and organized their personal effects
together for shipment. As clearly as possible they tried to tag the
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