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

72 The Road to Safwan
Marable had not given any serious consideration as to where to
put prisoners when she laid out the DSA. After discussing the
situation Majors Burdan and Marable decided the prisoner
would be turned directly over to the division MP platoon. The
Bedouin was placed in a vacant tent near the military police
platoon. The captive told interpreters who worked with the
MPs that he was a Saudi whose family, contrary to the orders to
leave the area, was still in the desert to the northwest, and had
stopped to look at our camp because he was curious. The command
post called the Saudi police to help resolve the situation,
and they arrived as a Bradley towed the Bedouin’s damaged
truck into the assembly area. Meanwhile, the Saudis decided
that the captive was not a threat and released him. The result
was that within two days of the capture, the scattered nomad
camps that were in the staging area west of the Wadi al Batin
had vanished. Apparently, it was getting too dangerous and the
tribesmen decided to take their government’s word that they
needed to move farther south.
Meanwhile A Troop continued its preparations for combat,
and as late as January 24, this was still Wilson’s primary concern.
Many of its scouts were still new to their weapons systems
and in one instance CPT Pope found some of his Bradleys with
their guns pointed straight in the air, a serious violation for armored
vehicles. His quick investigation indicated that the
crews were not quite sure of themselves, and trying to figure
out how the system worked. The good news was that his three
tank crews were good shots and were ready to go. However,
still short of soldiers to man three full platoons, he reorganized
the troop into two normal platoons and a reaction platoon with
three tanks and three Bradleys. He sent his remaining three
M3A2s to the field trains until he had sufficient soldiers to man
them. They returned to him about ten days later with partial
crews. With this modification, Pope told the squadron commander
on January 26 that he was ready. The troop departed
TAA Roosevelt for DSA Junction City early the next day, along
with the squadron command post and Headquarters Troop.
Throughout the movement to the desert, Pope had his crews
practice fire commands and basic crew drill. 10
By late afternoon on the twenty-seventh, the entire squadron