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

76 The Road to Safwan
In the course of conducting his operations, LTC Wilson discovered
his unit was not the only one conducting activities
along the border. The executive officer for the VII Corps Long
Range Surveillance Unit (LRSU) drove into the squadron command
post late on January 27. As its name implies, the LRSU’s
task is to move into hostile territory forward of the corps and observe
the enemy. Its mode of operation was to establish small,
hidden, observation posts, consisting of two or three soldiers,
and locate and report on the enemy using night vision equipment
and other detection devices. LTG Franks directed CPT
Donald Clark, the unit commander, to observe this sector at the
same time the squadron received its orders to do the same. Of
course, this was not coordinated properly as neither the
squadron nor the division had any indication they would be in
the area. The LRSU company executive officer set up his small
command post about twenty yards away from the squadron
TOC. Although Wilson’s troops were supposed to evacuate
these teams in case they ran into problems or were attacked by
Iraqi troops, the reconnaissance unit’s executive officer would
not permit the cavalrymen to know exactly where these teams
were, as they reported their intelligence information directly to
the VII Corps headquarters. When the corps G2 lost communications
with the reconnaissance unit, they called the 1st Infantry
Division who then called the squadron command post, which
then sent a runner to find the unit commander. This breakdown
of communications was frequent enough for the corps commander
to extract the LRSU on January 31. 15
Initially, the screen line was fairly quiet; however, things
soon changed. At 0315 hours on February 1, a small convoy of
Arab soldiers ran into A Troop’s screen line. With no warning,
and concerned about reports of Iraqi activity north of the border,
the troop responded with caution. Each of the nine small
pickup trucks had a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on its
bed and was accompanied by a total of fifty-two soldiers. One
of the Bradley crew fired a 25-mm HEAT (High Explosive, Antitank)
round across the front of the column to get them to stop,
creating quite a bit of confusion. The scouts approached and
found an English-speaking soldier who was upset at being
fired at. They all claimed to be Saudi Arabian soldiers who had