Monday, March 31, 2003

Deployment of a Cavalry Contingent Is Speeded Up
Officially, the unexpectedly vicious guerrilla attacks on American forces in Iraq have not led to any changes in deployment plans for the troops. Tell that to the soldiers of the Second Armored Cavalry, who have been ordered to rush into the fight.

A cavalry contingent was told to fly directly to the Persian Gulf region, rather than sail on slow freighters, as had been planned.

The new orders, which arrived only last Monday, sent 500 members of the light cavalry regiment into what one officer called "a state of controlled chaos" in preparation for their early departure on Sunday.

Iraqi guerrillas have attacked advancing American and British troops and supply lines across southern Iraq as coalition ground forces have sped toward Baghdad, and guarding convoys and scouting enemy territory is one specialty of an Army regiment like the Second Cavalry.

Armored Humvee scout vehicles, which can carry .50-caliber machine guns and TOW antitank missiles, lined the runway at this former Air Force base, ready to be loaded onto cargo planes.

Kiowa reconnaissance helicopters had their rotors tied back for loading aboard the huge C-5 and C-17 cargo planes that are to fly them to Kuwait. Black cowboy hats sat on the pilot seats inside several Kiowa cockpits, a reminder of the days before these cavalry units traded in their horses for helicopters.

When the order came on Monday to accelerate the departure of 500 troops, and to travel with their vehicles by military airlift instead of by sea, Colonel Wolff said: "Let's get it on. Let's get going." The regimental commander was scheduled to be aboard the third plane to depart on Sunday.

[From his headquarters in Qatar on Sunday, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of all allied forces for the war in Iraq, suggested that no new deployment orders had been issued as a result of the battlefield surprises of the war's first week and a half. "It would be instructive to see how many of those have been issued with respect to this theater over the past 11 days," General Franks told reporters. "I don't know of any."]

For several days, General Franks and other senior officers have been challenged by critics who suggested that they had not anticipated the stiff resistance of Iraqi fighters, and that their war plans had not allocated enough troops to the ground war, which occurred sooner than some had expected. The officers have replied that all is going according to an overall plan — but that the plan itself was flexible.

In any event, the troops of the Second Armored Cavalry, who received their initial deployment order several weeks ago, are now needed sooner than anticipated. Colonel Wolff said the first 500 members of the unit could be on the ground and ready for battle in little more than a week.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/international/worldspecial/31DEPL.html

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