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WE LIVE PROUDLY OR DIE HONORABLY

February 1, 1973: I had achieved what I could with our Arab comrades. Our more immediate concern had now to be the rebuilding of relations with the Soviets which Dr. Sidqiy had begun in October. Fortunately, the Soviets were as keen as we were. A military delegation under General Lashnekov now came to Cairo. After a series of discussions, they left with an agreed list of our armament needs.

March 1973: General Isma`yil went to Moscow to sign a new arms agreement based upon that list. Under the agreement, we would get:

-One squadron of MIG-23s, the Egyptian pilots to be sent in May or June to the Soviet Union for training;

One brigade of R-17E surface-to-surface missiles (SCUDs) to be delivered within the third quarter of 1973;

About 200 BMP (mechanized infantry combat vehicles), some to be delivered at once, the rest in the third quarter of 1973;

Some 50 Malyutka anti-tank guided weapons (known in the West as SAGGER);

One QUADRAT (SAM-6) brigade;

Field artillery, including the 180mm gun.

The wire-guided 9M14M Malyutka SAGGER, a wire-guided antitank guided missile with a shaped-charge HEAT warhead. The 9M14M missile weighs 10.9 kg, is 860 mm long, has a body diameter of 125 mm and a wing span of 393 mm. The SAGGER is capable of engaging targets at ranges of 500 to 3,000 meters and can penetrate over 400 mm of armor.

It was also agreed that the Soviet Union would send back to Egypt the four MIG-25 reconnaissance aircraft and the electronic reconnaissance and jamming squadron.

A great relief. Relations with the Soviet Union improved overnight.

July 9: And the Soviets kept their promises. Hafiz Isma`yil the President's National Security Adviser, told me today he was going to Moscow. He asked what problems I had within the armed forces that should be raised with Brezhnev. I told him that so far deliveries were on schedule; but the Soviet Union had still not sent the R-17E brigade, nor returned the MIG-25s and the electronic reconnaissance and jamming squadron.

July 12: General Samakhodsky (who had replaced General Okunev as Soviet military liaison officer) informed me that General Sapkov would arrive next day with five officers to prepare the arrival of the R-17E brigade's equipment. Within eight to ten days, Samakhodsky said, 63 Soviet experts would be arriving-26 to hand over the equipment and leave at once, the other 37 to train our personnel.

July 14: Sapkov and Samakhodsky in my office, to discuss the formation and training of the brigade.

July 17: A GHQ conference: my assistants and departmental directors present. The formation of this new missile brigade in the shortest possible time, I said, was a challenge to us. We could not afford to fail. After that, the meeting was marvelous. We worked out a way of setting up an entire brigade-officers, men, light weapons, transport, communications-in two weeks.

SAM - 6 ( Quadrat ) missile system. Entred in service in the Egyptian armed forces in1971. Type : Medium Range Engagement : 24 km. Engagement altitude : up to 10 km. Target speed : up to 600 m/s

The plan worked. While the missiles were approaching Alexandria docks in the last week of July, we were setting up the brigade and selecting caves for missile storage well out of sight of satellite reconnaissance.

August 1: The brigade, complete with missiles, started its training.

Nor was this unique. Our pitch of training was such that in a few months we absorbed without difficulty all the Soviet equipment that now flooded in. Apart from the missiles, the trickiest to absorb was the BMP infantry vehicle*, because it was wholly new to us. But by the first days of August 1973, it was clear we would have at least two battalions of these, 80 vehicles, in action by early September and the remaining 120 vehicles, in another three battalions, ready by the beginning of October.

We were as ready as we were ever going to be.

NEXT EPISODE: The Lull Before The Storm

* The Bronevaya Maschina Piekhota (BMP-1) was first built in the early 1960s and first seen in action in the Suez front in 1973. It was called the M-1967 and BMP by NATO before its correct designation was known. The main armament of the BMP1 is unusual, in that it fires the same ammunition as the RPG-7 infantry rocket propelled grenade launcher. A launching rail for the AT-3 Sagger antitank guided missile is located above the gun for longer range antitank capability (up to 3,000 meters). The BMP represented an important shift from the concept of an armored personnel carrier to an armored infantry combat vehicle. The BMP-1 was innovative in that it allowed the infantry being carried to fire their personal weapons from within the vehicle whilst remaining protected by armour. It carries a 73mm, 2A20 gun with maximum rounds of 40 and maximum range of over 7,000 ft. Its 73-mm main gun fires a rocket-assisted, fin- stabilized HEAT projectile with an effective range of 800 meters medium (capable of successfully engaging tanks at ranges up to 1,300 meters) and is equipped with an automatic loader.

In the chapter dealing with the certainty of success, we discussed the place that boldness occupies in the dynamic system of forces, and the part it plays when opposed to prudence and discretion. We tried to show that the theorist has no right to restrict boldness on doctrinal grounds.

This noble capacity to rise above the most menacing dangers should also be considered as a principle in itself, separate and active. Indeed, in what field of human activity is boldness more at home than in war?

A soldier, whether drummer boy or general, can possess no nobler quality; it is the very metal that gives edge and luster to the sword.

Let us admit that boldness in war even has its own prerogatives. It must be granted a certain power over and above successful calculations involving space, time, and magnitude of forces, for wherever it is superior, it will take advantage of its opponent's weakness. In other words, it is a genuinely creative force. This fact is not difficult to prove even scientifically. Whenever boldness encounters timidity, it is likely to be the winner, because timidity in itself implies a loss of equilibrium. Boldness will be at a disadvantage only in an encounter with deliberate caution, which may be considered bold in its own right, and is certainly just as powerful and effective; but such cases are rare. Timidity is the root of prudence in the majority of men.

In most soldiers, the development of boldness can never be detrimental to other qualities, because the rank and file is bound by duty and the conditions of the service to a higher authority, and thus is led by external intelligence. With them boldness acts like a coiled spring, ready at any time to be released.

The higher up the chain of command, the greater is the need for boldness to be supported by a reflective mind, so that boldness does not degenerate into purposeless bursts of blind passion. Command becomes progressively less a matter of personal sacrifice and increasingly concerned for the safety of others and for the common purpose. The quality that in most soldiers is disciplined by service regulations that have become second nature to them, must in the commanding officer be disciplined by reflection. In a commander a bold act may prove to be a blunder. Nevertheless, it is a laudable error, not to be regarded on the same footing as others.

Happy the army where illtimed boldness occurs frequently; it is a luxuriant weed, but indicates the richness of the soil. Even foolhardiness-that is, boldness without any object-is not to be despised: basically it stems from daring, which in this case has erupted with a passion unrestrained by thought. Only when boldness rebels against obedience, when it defiantly ignores an expressed command, must it be treated as a dangerous offense; then it must be prevented, not for its innate qualities, but because an order has been disobeyed, and in war obedience is of cardinal importance.

Given the same amount of intelligence, timidity will do a thousand times more damage in war than audacity. The truth of this observation will be self-evident to our readers.

In fact, the supervention of a rational purpose ought to make it easier to be bold, and therefore less meritorious. Yet the opposite is true.

The power of the various emotions is sharply reduced by the intervention of lucid thought and, more, by self control. Consequently, boldness grows less common in the higher ranks. Even if the growth of an officer's perception and intelligence does not keep pace with his rise in rank, the realities of war will impose their conditions and concerns on him. Indeed their influence on him will be greater the less he really understands them. In war, this is the main basis for the experience expressed in the French proverb, "Tel brille au second qui s'eclipse au premier." Nearly every general known to us from history as mediocre, even vacillating, was noted for dash and determination as a junior officer. More can be achieved with an army drawn from people known for their boldness, an army in which a daring spirit has always been nurtured, than with an army that lacks this quality

Carl Von Clausewitz; Prussian Military Philosopher

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DESIGNED BY

"We live proudly or die honorably."
" IN MEMORY OF THE THOUSANDS OF EGYPTIAN AND SYRIAN SOLDIERS
WHO FOUGHT THE 1973 RAMADAN WAR, A TRIBUTE TO THOSE WHO DIED IN DEFENSE OF THEIR HOMELAND AND THE ARAB NATION "