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

62 The Road to Safwan
Tedesco was the senior member of the squadron staff at Camp
Mackenzie, so he discussed this mission with him and directed
that the squadron begin initial planning. 16 LTC Wilson arrived
from port later that afternoon and Tedesco briefed him on the
general’s visit and his planning guidance.
On January 18, CPT Bills and MAJ Burdan drove toward
the Wadi Al-Batin to see what routes the squadron would use
when it moved to the division’s designated attack position due
west of TAA Roosevelt. The Wadi Al-Batin is a dry riverbed that
ultimately forms Kuwait’s western boundary. It is about half a
mile wide and ringed by small hills and low ridges. With no
trees in the region, it was one of the few landmarks available for
desert travelers. It was clear to both officers that this was an avenue
of approach into Saudi Arabia that the Iraqis could use in
an attack south. Indeed, in 633 AD this feature guided the Muslim
armies as they began their conquest of Persia. Until the beginning
of the air campaign, General Schwarzkopf had done
everything in his power to convince Saddam Hussein that this
was exactly the avenue his forces would take when they attempted
to liberate Kuwait. This terrain feature was also the
boundary line between the VII Corps’s tactical assembly area in
the east, and its attack zone in the west. 17
Bills and Burdan knew that the 1st Cavalry Division was operating
in that area and that friendly Arab units were stationed
along the border with Iraq. A Syrian unit that was repositioning
eastward across the corps’s front startled them, as the two
American officers were not used to the sight of Soviet-made vehicles
as friendly forces. For all their military lives, these officers
had trained to destroy this kind of equipment; now they were on
the same side. Of course, since the Iraqis used many of the same
type of Soviet-made tanks, trucks, and personnel carriers, the
possibilities of confusion and mistaken identity were real. They
returned to the squadron that evening. 18
That same afternoon a British signal unit arrived in the
squadron area and set up approximately one mile to the north.
As part of the overall operation, they were providing communications
for the British units in the corps area. Quarter Horse’s
enterprising mess steward, SFC Zahniser, wasted no time in
catching a ride over to its assembly area to find out how they