On
the possibility of Egyptian forces attempting to cross the Canal:
"
To cross the Suez Canal the Egyptians would need the combined support
of both the American and the Soviet engineer corps!" General
Moshe Dayan, the Israeli Defense Minister
EPISODE
SEVEN
The
figures give the measure of our task. In May 1971 we had in active
service some 800,000 troops; 36,000 officers, 764,000
NCOs* (Non Commissioned Officer) and men. By October 1973,
barely two-and-a-half years later, we had 1.2 million troops: 66,000
officers, and 1,134,000 NCOs and men. How, in 29 months,
did we create 30,000 officers and more than 370,000 NCOs
and men?
As
I viewed it in May 1971, the famine of officers posed the more serious
problem. Moulding a good soldier is hard enough; building an officer is
tougher still. We faced not only a dearth of officers for new units, but
even our existing units were 30-40 percent short of their wartime
officer complement, a shortage of 15,000 officers. We still needed
another 15,000 officers for new units to be created in the coming
two years. But the maximum output from our military, naval and air force
academies plus our reserve officers' college was 3,000 officers
a year. Our existing officer reserve could not ease the strain: we had
already called them all up. Without officers, what could we do? It was
not primarily a matter of officers giving commands. The crucial role of
officers is the training of their men before the battle starts. Without
officers, training would suffer; that, in turn, would damage our units'
fighting efficiency. Were we then to postpone the war for ten years?
I
decided upon a drastic solution: the creation of a new junior rank called
War Officer. He would be qualified in a single specialization, with the
barest knowledge of the other skills of soldiering. On that emergency basis,
training could be cut to four or five months. At the end of it, the War
Officer would be able, just, to command some specific platoon-a job he
would hold throughout the war.
Egyptian
University graduates called upon to serve in the new army, swelling the
pool of NCOs to 35,000
Luckily,
we had a pool to draw from. Among our NCOs and men were about 25,000
university graduates. They were the logical candidates. Turning most of
them into officers would solve a chronic discipline problem as well. We
were plagued with quarrels, even fights, between these university graduates
and their platoon and company commanders. Over the two year period from
1971-73 other 10,000 graduates were called up, swelling our
pool to 35,000. We trained 25,000 as War Officers. Meanwhile,
our academies trained
5,000 career officers by more conventional
means. We had our extra
30,000. By the eve of the October
War, we had filled our ranks of officers, with one or two percent
margin for casualties.
Filling
our ranks of soldiers posed other headaches. The armed forces needed about
160,000 draftees a year. Demographically, Egypt with its
population of 35 million produced 350,000 young men of draftable
age each year. The reality- I write of the early 1970s-was that
out of those 350,000 we could find barely 120,000 who satisfied
our minimum education and health standards. Regularly, we had a shortage
of 40,000 recruits a year.
I decided
on two steps. The first was to accept, under force majeure, lower medical
and education standards. The second was to open the door to women for certain
base and rear unit roles: secretaries, telephone operators, cooks
and the like. I did not achieve the latter without dissent. When I threw
open our problems of manpower for discussion at one of my monthly meetings,
the majority rejected the idea of women in the armed forces, even
as volunteers. After a heated discussion, it was clear I would have to
be content with women limited to being secretaries. (The first volunteers
finished training in
November 1973.) I could not help reflecting
that women had joined our armed forces as nurses 20 years before
and wondered how long the next step would take.
That
extra manpower-30,000 officers and 370,000, NCOs and men-was
the key to our creation of hundreds of new units in the two years before
the war. It would be tedious to enumerate them all. I mention, as examples,
only those specialized units we created to ease or solve the problems of
the crossing itself.
One
was the amphibious brigade. We decided to set it up in January 1972,
after studies for The High Minarets had thrown up problems of timing.
We did not envisage having ferries to take heavy tanks and heavy equipment
into our bridgeheads before H + 5 Hours, nor bridges before H
+ 7 to H + 9 Hours. But on the cast bank of the Bitter Lakes,
the Israelis had built neither defenses nor obstacles. An amphibious brigade
could take tanks and heavy equipment over the lakes in less than an hour.
We
organized the brigade from one of our special forces units, so it could
be used to deploy high firepower with maximum mobility. We gave it 20 or
so amphibious tanks and some 80 amphibious mechanized infantry combat
vehicles (MICVs).
By
mid-1972, the brigade was almost ready; on June 15, 1972,
1 issued Directive 15: An Amphibious Battalion Acting as a Spearhead
Force Across a Water Barrier. A demonstration was carried out under my
supervision on August 28. The first proper field exercise came on
the night of October 22/23. Steadily tougher training followed,
with the brigade gradually attempting voyages as long as six hours. Finally
I decided the time had come to test its true capabilities and prepared
an exercise for the night of July 18/19, 1973. The brigade's mission
was:
-
ONE:
To embark with amphibious tanks and MICVs from a concentration area near
the sea.
-
TWO:
To complete a sea voyage of almost 20 miles by night.
-
THREE:
To land at a designated location and time.
-
FOUR:
To proceed inland to attack enemy positions and hold the advance of enemy
reserves.
The
mission was, of course, very similar to what I had in mind for the brigade
during the war, though if anything somewhat tougher. The High Minarets
required the brigade to cross barely five miles of water. I had deliberately
piled on the hazards.
I stayed
with the brigade throughout that night. One battalion did fulfill its mission;
the other lost its way at sea and came ashore out of location and in some
trouble. Two of its vehicles and ten of its men were missing. We picked
up seven of them; three were drowned. Despite that, the brigade's confidence
grew remarkably: they had learned a lot of lessons, but now they knew what
they and their equipment could do.
Less
than 80 days later, the training paid off. On October 6,
the amphibious brigade crossed the Bitter Lakes in less than one-half
hour and without a casualty. I was in the Operations Room when I heard
the news. I spared a moment to offer a silent prayer for the three who
had given their lives for that success.
Amphibious
assault might take us around the Israeli flank, but the frontal crossing
of the Canal was fundamentally an engineering problem. The plan
required our engineers to carry out enormous tasks:
-
ONE:
Open 70 passages through the sand barrier.
-
TWO:
Build ten heavy-duty bridges for tanks and heavy equipment.
-
THREE:
Build five light bridges, each with a capacity of four tons.
-
FOUR:
Build ten pontoon bridges for infantry.
-
FIVE:
Build and operate
35 ferries.
-
SIX:
Crew 720 rubber dinghies for the initial assault.
All
this to be tackled simultaneously in the shortest possible time. The passages
were to be opened in 5 to 7 hours, immediately followed by the ferries,
then the bridges two hours later. All this under enemy fire.
Clearly,
we would need great skill and even greater courage. But our first need
was for men and equipment. It will be seen why the creation of engineer
units was a top priority. In just over two years we succeeded in creating
and training almost 40 engineer battalions, some of them highly
specialized. It was our biggest coup and the foundation of our success.
In
his memoirs, the Israeli Chief of Staff, General David Elazar,
records that during a discussion in the Israeli High Command of the possibility
of Egyptian forces attempting to cross the Canal, General Moshe
Dayan, the Israeli Defense Minister, said:
"To cross the
Suez Canal the Egyptians would need the combined
support of both
the American and the Soviet engineer corps!"
I
do not hold Dayan's dismissive remark against him. I accept
the tribute. I know how hard we worked. |
