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

190 The Road to Safwan
everyone a good night’s sleep and to provide for minimal manning
of the screen line, telling the troopers that they would definitely
not be moving from the area for a few days. 9
Shortly after midnight on March 1, the 1st Infantry Division’s
night operations officer had just settled down to what he
anticipated would be a routine shift. The Big Red One’s headquarters
was on the Basra-Kuwait highway just west of the
burning fires of Kuwait’s oil fields and the night sky had a red
glow overlaid with the constant roaring sound of the flaming
wells. Troops moved around in the night not needing flashlights.
MG Thomas G. Rhame and his principal staff officers
had finally gone to bed after almost a week of operations that
had begun on February 23. Danger Main’s night shift began the
routine task of general security and accounting for all soldiers
and equipment, and planning for subsequent operations. 10
Shortly before 0200 hours, the VII Corps tactical operations
center’s (TAC) duty officer called to ask if the 1st Division had
the area around Safwan, a small village in southeastern Iraq,
under control or observation. Since he had just confirmed the
locations of all units in the division, the duty officer said no. 11
Suddenly, this little town had become extremely important.
Over the next eighteen hours, two commands from the 1st Infantry
Division would confront Saddam Hussein’s army on
Iraqi soil in an incident that threatened to reopen the just-concluded
conflict.
The problem had begun on February 28 when General Powell
ordered General Schwarzkopf to conduct a cease-fire ceremony
with the Iraqi High Command. Schwarzkopf wanted this
site located deep in Iraq so it was obvious to all who was the victor
and who was the vanquished. He also wanted it at a location
that the Iraqi delegation could reach by road. 12 He directed his
chief of staff, MG Robert B. Johnston, to find a suitable site.
Around 2100 hours Johnston called LTG John Yeosock, the Third
Army commander, who was at his command post on the other
side of Riyadh, for site suggestions. Without contacting either of
his corps commanders, who were familiar with the conditions
on the ground, he suggested three possible locations: the village
of Shaibah outside of al Basra, Jalibah Airfield about eighty
miles west of al Basra, and a location across the Hawr al Ham-