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The 1st Brigade took the division left (north) sector, tying in with the101st Airborne Division. The 2d Squadron, 4th Cavalry, the 24th’sreconnaissance unit, moved east from the Hawr al Malih lake area toset up a tactical assembly area behind the 1st Brigade. The 2d Brigadeleft its newly won airfield position and assumed the center sector ofthe division front. The 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment took the rightsector, tying in with the VII Corps to the south. With the 24th Divisionnow oriented east after its northern advance of the first two days, a newseries of attacks began between the Tallil Airfield and the Ar Rumaylahoil fields just southwest of Al Basrah.The attacks down Highway 8 showed more clearly than any otherepisode the weaknesses of Iraqi field forces and the one-sidedness of theconflict. Through the afternoon and night of 27 February, the tankers,Bradley gunners, and helicopter crews and artillerymen of the 24thInfantry Division fired at hundreds of vehicles trying to redeploy to meetthe new American attack from the west or simply to escape north acrossthe Euphrates River valley and west on Highway 8. With no intelligencecapability left to judge the size or location of the oncoming Americanarmored wedges and attack-helicopter swarms, as well as insufficientcommunications to coordinate a new defense, Iraqi units stumbled intodisaster. Unsuspecting drivers of every type of vehicle, from tanks toartillery prime movers and even commandeered civilian autos, racedrandomly across the desert or west on Highway 8 only to run intoGeneral McCaffrey’s firestorm. Some drivers, seeing vehicles explodeand burn, veered off the road in vain attempts to escape. Others stopped,dismounted, and walked toward the Americans with raised hands.When the division staff detected elements of the Hammurabi Divisionof the Republican Guard moving across the 24th’s front, McCaffreyconcentrated the fire of nine artillery battalions and an Apache battalionon the once-elite enemy force. At dawn the next day, the twenty-eighth,hundreds of vehicles lay crumpled and smoking on Highway 8 and atscattered points across the desert. The 24th’s lead elements, only thirtymiles west of Al Basrah, set up a hasty defense in place.The 24th Division’s valley battles of 25–27 February renderedineffective all Iraqi units encountered in the division sector and trappedmost of the Republican Guard divisions to the south while the VII Corpsbore into them from the west, either blasting units in place or takingtheir surrender. In its own battles, the 24th achieved some of the mostimpressive results of the ground war. McCaffrey’s troops had advancedone hundred ninety miles into Iraq to the Euphrates River, then turnedeast and advanced another seventy miles, all in four days. Along the way,60