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

Operations in the TAA 59
contents of the trailers without any special concern as to the
rightful owner. Later, the troop commanders and their noncommissioned
officers expended a great deal of effort in reestablishing
property accountability. In the meantime, they loaded what
they could, and the headquarters and combat support elements
prepared to head south into the corps logistics area should the
Iraqis attack. Fortunately, there was no attack and the Iraqi
Army lost a chance to thwart the American build-up in the VII
Corps sector. The next morning, the squadron had to unload all
the vehicles, and place the equipment back into storage. 8
Camp Mackenzie continued to expand and improve with
the arrival of vehicles and personnel from the port. Work on the
perimeter defenses was continuous and a source of pride for
the soldiers. The squadron mess section under SFC William J.
Zahniser produced some of the best fighting positions in the
squadron area and better than those constructed by the tankers
and scouts. Credit for these desert masterpieces went to SPC
Daniel E. Butts, one of the cooks, who began with a primitive
fighting position dug into the hard Saudi dirt and, when not
working in the mess, continued to deepen and enlarge it. He
added some overhead cover and created a textbook example of
a small-unit fighting position, the kind not often found among
supporting troops. Creating fighting positions for the heavy
equipment was much more difficult and the squadron managed
to borrow a few bulldozers from the division engineer
battalion, and used them to prepare dug-in fighting positions
for tanks and Bradleys.
Troopers working perimeter security took their jobs seriously
and reported anything suspicious. The most common reports
were of the ubiquitous white Toyota pickup trucks that
seemed to appear out of nowhere, observe the Americans, and
then disappear into the desert. Other observations were more
comical. On the evening of January 14, a scout reported 60–100
unidentified people heading towards the perimeter. A short
time later the same team amended its report to indicate that the
attackers were a family of wild camels. 9 In another instance, a
squadron soldier noticed a man with a backpack moving towards
him from about 100–125 meters away. The soldier called
out for his guard commander and then yelled out for what he