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

Notes 269
Corps, FRAGO 129-91 VII Corps conducts Obstacle Crossing. Wilson
believes that the squadron destroyed about 23 tanks, 25 APCs, and
captured over 100 POWs.
Chapter 12
1. Portions of this chapter appeared previously as “A Nervous Night
on the Basra Road” in MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History
12, no. 1(Autumn 1999), 88–101.
2. Williamson Murry, Air War in the Persian Gulf (Baltimore: The Nautical
& Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1996), 288–89;
United States, Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf
War: Final Report to Congress (Washington, D.C: GPO, 1992), 276.
3. U.S. Third Army, Tactical Command Post (TAC), G3 Fires, Staff
Journal, 27 February 1991; Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E.
Trainor, The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1995), 412–13; Frederick M.
Franks Jr., Interview by Mace Carpenter, tape recording, 23 March
1994, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Air University,
Maxwell Air Force Base, AL; Note from Richard Swain to author,
4 June 2004. This is an extremely confusing action that is beyond
the scope of this narrative.
4. USARCENT, Desert Storm Intelligence Summary, briefing slide:
“Basra Box, G+5”, Swain Papers, Combined Arms Center Historical
Archives, Fort Leavenworth, KS.
5. Stephen A. Bourque, “Correcting Myths about the Persian Gulf
War: the Last Stand of the Tawakalna,” Middle East Journal, 51 (Autumn
1997): 572–76.
6. 1st Infantry Division TAC, Staff Journal, 27 Feb. 91, entries 52, 54,
59, 61.
7. CPT Michael A. Bills, interview by John Burdan, B Troop, 1st
Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 3 February 1996.
8. 1-4 Cavalry Operations Staff, “Riders on the Storm,” Armor 100
(May 1991): 17.
9. Burdan, Personal Notes; 1-4 Cavalry Operations Staff, “Riders on
the Storm,” 17.
10. Bills interview, 3 February 1996.
11. 1-4 Cavalry Operations Staff, “Riders on the Storm,” 17; Burdan,
Personal Notes.
12. Rhame interview, 26 July 1991; Lon E. Maggart, “A Leap of Faith,”
Armor 101 (January-February 1992): 30; 1-4 Cavalry Operations
Staff, “Riders on the Storm,” 17.