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

70 The Road to Safwan
left for DSA Junction City the next day. Once there, he established
a forward command post with B Troop’s CP and prepared
to receive the rest of the squadron.
Moving the aviation troops was a complicated undertaking.
First, they had to complete the relocation from the 4th Brigade’s
airfield to Camp Mackenzie and then they immediately had to
reorganize for the move to Junction City. By 2200 hours on January
24, most of the aviators had arrived at Camp Mackenzie,
although some of the support vehicles would trickle in
throughout the night and into the morning. Early the next
morning, CPT Chris Philbrick led the aviation troops’ support
vehicles west toward B Troop. Of course, Philbrick did not have
a map and led the convoy by a little luck and occasional radio
calls to CPT Bills who was on the newly formed screen line.
Somehow, he turned off Tapline Road at the right spot and was
soon driving north, past the corps logistics base. Working on
rather vague orders, the aviators continued north, chose a spot
and “circled the wagons.”
The helicopters arrived late on the afternoon of January 25
after some of them had had their own adventure on the way.
One of the helicopter flights had trouble finding the squadron
command post and landed near a collection of army vehicles. It
turned out to be an isolated corps maintenance unit, all in dugin
positions and manning their weapons and machine guns.
“Man are we glad to see you guys!” exclaimed the maintenance
company commander at the sight of the four Cobras and six
scout aircraft. “We think that we have some Iraqis in vehicles
over there behind those hills. Can you help us out?” Although
he doubted that there was anything this far south of the border,
the aviation commander, CPT Jim Tovsen, directed 2LT Steve
Gruenig to take a scout weapons team and “bound out to see if
you can see anything.” Gruenig found nothing. Tovsen told the
maintenance commander to relax and the troop took off to locate
the remainder of the squadron. 7 The next day COL Mowery
arrived in Junction City and visited the Air Troop Assembly
Area. He remarked that they were in the wrong spot, but they
could stay where they were. Philbrick, however, was quite concerned
when he discovered that his group was north of the B
Troop line. For several nights the ground scouts reported