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

Preparation 25
The M1A1, with its 120-mm main gun, was not even on post, as
the division’s tank battalions all used the older M1 with a 105mm
gun. Support from the Armor School continued as Fort
Knox sent a new equipment training team with a company
(fourteen) of M1A1s to Fort Riley. Before the squadron deployed,
most of the tank crews were familiar with the operation
of the new equipment they would take into battle. 14
In addition to tanks, the squadron incorporated other new
equipment into its inventory. For example, one morning CPT
Morrison, the headquarters troop commander, walked into
Wilson’s office and showed him an advertisement for the Magellan
Global Positioning System or GPS. Essentially, this small
box allowed a unit to travel cross-country, using satellite information,
without needing a compass, truly an advanced concept
for ground soldiers at the time. Such devices were not yet on
any of the standard army authorization documents, but both
leaders knew about the technology and understood its promise.
They prepared a request and sent it on to division headquarters
and they received a shipment in time for deployment. 15
Other new equipment arrived just before departure. The division’s
leaders exchanged their World War I-era .45 caliber,
M1911A2 pistols for the new 9-mm Beretta. This change, in a
era of little free time, required the user to attend a class on how
to fire and maintain this much lighter weapon. Then the new
owners had to go to the firing range to qualify. The unit received
and issued wrist compasses, Motorola walkie-talkies,
and quiet Honda generators for mobile power in the desert. In
addition, M939A2 five-ton trucks, M998 High-Mobility Multipurpose
Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV), affectionately called the
“Humvee,” and the ten-ton heavy trucks arrived in the
squadron to replace older equipment. 16
One aspect of the division’s long-standing mission of going
to war in Europe was that the equipment was camouflaged in
shades of green, dark brown, and black. The new orders required
repainting so that vehicles would blend in with the
desert environment. In addition, the paint provided a simple resistance
to chemical weapons effects. Within four weeks, division
soldiers and Fort Riley’s logistics operation had repainted
the Big Red One’s entire complement of 6,800 vehicles, using