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

218 The Road to Safwan
some soldiers, including CPT Bills, discovered that their relatively
new 9-mm pistols were inoperative. Obviously, this could
have been quite dangerous if they had needed to use them a
month earlier. While firing the weapons on the tanks and
Bradleys, the crews discovered a number of defective TOW missile
rounds, caused by moisture that collected in the canister.
Again, it was a potentially dangerous condition. 7
On March 29 the 4th Brigade warning order arrived notifying
the squadron to be prepared to relieve the 2nd Cavalry
along Highway 8 and the Euphrates River. While everyone reacted
with professionalism, all were disappointed that they
were not heading south back to Saudi Arabia. It required quite
a great deal of leadership skills to keep everyone focused on the
tasks at hand and not to be thinking about home and redeployment.
8 The brigade’s plan was to use the squadron to screen the
critical portion of the MDL. The 1-1 Aviation with its scout and
attack helicopters would be used to patrol the remainder of the
division’s portion of the MDL. Planning for the squadron’s mission
began immediately.
Before they moved to the Euphrates, the squadron celebrated
Easter, March 30, in the desert. Chaplain Lou Parker
held a well-attended sunrise service and the squadron stood
down. It was a time for writing letters and relaxing. Leaders
used the time to catch up on their paperwork, especially the
submission of awards and promotion packets for deserving soldiers.
9 That evening, almost as if the ancient gods of Ur were offended
by the plethora of crosses in their desert, a huge sand
storm blew in from the east. While the squadron’s crews and
vehicles weathered the wall of wind, rain, and sand fairly well,
division headquarters was not so lucky. Perched on a large
mound of earth that possibly contained some of the remains of
a suburb of ancient Ur, the Big Red One’s command post took
the full brunt of the storm’s hurricane-force winds. In the rubble
left behind, under a pile of collapsed tents and computers,
were the waterlogged remains of many of the division’s award
recommendations. It would be weeks before the hard-working
personnel staffs, at division, brigade, and squadron, could repair
the damage. 10
On April 2, as part of the squadron’s mission planning, Wil-