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

86 The Road to Safwan
to the rear for fuel, they engaged the target with a TOW missile
at 3,200 meters. Another scout-weapons team replaced CPT
Tovsen’s element and confirmed the vehicle as destroyed. Unfortunately,
while it had appeared from a distance that it was an
armored vehicle of some kind, it later turned out that the
squadron had destroyed another bulldozer. The apparent gun
tube was part of a broken driver’s cage that had a leg sticking
out at a 90-degree angle from the driver’s seat. 10
Task Force 3-37 Armor on the screen line to the squadron’s
east was not having any better luck in developing its combat
identification skills. That evening, the cavalry scouts and
ground surveillance radar teams began reporting a variety of activity
in their sector moving across the combat command’s front
toward the armored task force’s sector. Shortly after 2000 hours,
radar determined that something was heading towards its Charlie
Team. LTC Gross put his unit on alert and directed his reserve
tank platoon into a position to assist the unit on the screen line.
Everyone waited, ready to respond. The team commander soon
broke the silence and reported that the unknown unit was in
sight, but was not sure what the rules of engagement were in
dealing with a “camel herd, nationality unknown.” 11
The cavalry ground scouts also became involved in this
rash of false identification. On February 6, 2LT Tom Karns, a
platoon leader with B Troop, reported three vehicles that appeared
to be Soviet-made BTR-60s moving towards his location.
The squadron was still prohibited from firing at vehicles
along the border without permission. Combat Command
Carter’s command post confirmed that there were no other
friendly units in the area and discussed the situation with the
division command post. Meanwhile, the “BTR-60s” had turned
back to the north and appeared to be looking for a place to cross
over the border barrier and head back into Iraq. MAJ Burdan
decided to verify that the vehicles were Iraqi and, if so, destroy
them before they could get away.
One of Karns’s noncommissioned officers, SSG Jimmy Burnett,
was a little concerned about the vehicles, having seen new
FOX chemical vehicles, which looked similar to BTRs, back in
port a few weeks ago. He persuaded his platoon leader to hold
fire until he could take a closer look. Moving forward under the