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

Preparation 23
to reintroduce this firepower back into the squadrons. 10
Finally on November 8, after four months of rumors and
anticipation, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney ordered the
1st Infantry Division to deploy as part of the European-based
VII Corps. Most of the division would be on the way right after
Christmas. During this period, from early August until late December,
LTC Wilson trained, reorganized, and re-equipped his
command for its new missions. Rather than an assembly area
southwest of Frankfurt, Germany, the cavalry was heading to
the Persian Gulf. 11
On November 22, LTC Terry Bullington, the 1st Infantry Division
G3 or operations officer, gave Wilson an opportunity he
could not refuse. The Department of the Army notified him that
the Big Red One was going to turn in most of its old M1 tanks
and pick up new M1A1s, in Saudi Arabia. In the process,
Bullington discovered that he would acquire nine more of these
modern systems than he had planned. He offered them to the
Quarter Horse if Wilson could produce a sound doctrinal basis
for organization and employment. While eager to increase his
firepower, Wilson understood that accompanying his new
Abrams tanks would be a long list of other requirements and
headaches. 12 Fortunately, he knew that the Armor School at Fort
Knox, Kentucky, was working on a new organization (called a
Modified Table of Organization and Equipment or MTOE) that
put nine tanks in each ground troop. Since his previous assignment
was as chief of cavalry at Fort Knox, he had his old organization
send Bullington the organizational details and the G3
now had the information he needed to complete the transaction
in Saudi Arabia. While this test organization called for twice as
many tanks as the squadron was getting, it provided planners
the guidelines they needed to requisition soldiers and supporting
equipment. With this document in hand, squadron leaders
and Fort Riley’s force modernization staff began working out
the details of this unanticipated gift. Wilson assigned six tanks
to CPT Bills and his experienced B Troop, and three to CPT
Pope’s new A Troop.
In addition to picking up the tanks in Saudi Arabia, the
squadron faced four important problems. First, it required soldiers
to operate and maintain the tanks. Second, it needed