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

14 Recovery
During the cease-fire negotiations on March
3, General Schwarzkopf presented the
Iraqi representatives with a map showing
a temporary boundary line that separated coalition and Iraqi
military forces. He directed that until both sides agreed on a
permanent cease-fire, opposing units would stay one thousand
meters away from this boundary to prevent unintended engagements,
such as had taken place the day before in the 24th
Infantry Division’s sector. There, in a short but intense battle
near the Hawr Al Hammer causeway across the Euphrates
River, Victory Division’s 1st Brigade destroyed most of an Iraqi
brigade from the Hammurabi Mechanized Division in an engagement
that should not have taken place. 1 With great hesitation,
the Iraqi commission agreed to the temporary boundary. 2
LTG Frederick Franks’s VII Corps, including the 1st Infantry
Division, assumed control of this military demarcation line, or
MDL, as the XVIII Corps that had been in Saudi Arabia since the
previous August began heading for home. Soon after the negotiations
Franks’s command began shuffling around the Iraqi
desert. By the end of March, the 2nd Cavalry was patrolling the
Euphrates River from As Samawah, east to An Nasiriyah,
backed up by the 1st Infantry Division’s 3d Brigade. The 1st Armored
Division secured the sector from Highway 8 to Ar Rumaylah,
while the 3d Armored Division, which had replaced the
1st Infantry Division in the Safwan area, occupied the corps’s
right flank. Located in the center of the sector, at Assembly Area
Allen, was the remainder of the 1st Infantry Division including
the 1-4 Cavalry. These arrangements would continue to change
until most of the corps withdrew from Iraq in April. 3
203