The enemy has persisted in throwing away the lives of their tank crews. They have assaulted in "penny packet" groupings and their sole tactic remains the cavalry charge. In the latest manifestation, two brigades have driven against 16th Division. Once again, the attack has been stopped with heavy losses. In the past two days the enemy has lost another 260 tanks. Our strategy always has been to force the enemy. 

Our troops continued to improve their positions. Elements of the 1st Infantry Brigade, attached to 19th Division, captured `Ayuwn Muwsa south of Suez, first step in a calculated series of moves down the Sinai coast. But there was no room for complacency. At 1645 hours 2nd Division reported an attack on its left flank by an enemy tank battalion backed by mechanized infantry. The enemy has at last switched tactics. Their tanks have split into small groups, making good use of the terrain and following the strict rules of minor tactics. With some  success: the force has penetrated a mile inside the bridgehead. Darkness fell before the enemy was finally driven back. 

My second visit to the front. It was by now clear that the main enemy pressure was against our central sector. I wanted to discuss this with the Second Army Commander, Mam'uwn, and the Commander of the 2nd Division, Sa`dah. Neither, I found, saw reason to budge from their confidence of Monday. Second Army could hold its ground against the most concentrated thrust the enemy could mount. As an insurance policy in the light of yesterday's new tactics, wheeling to roll up the whole army from the flank. I phoned the order to our engineers to supply Second Army with 10,000 anti-tank mines at once. 

What did worry us was the continuing confusion at the bridges. Our Crossing Command had functioned admirably through the crucial hours of our assault. Its subsequent failures stemmed from the fact that the Command's authority in each division had been vested in that division's Chief of Staff. But as each Chief of Staff and his senior officers had moved forward inside the bridgeheads, crossing control had been progressively delegated to junior or even non-commissioned officers. The result was a series of traffic jams with everyone arguing priority. The remedy, I resolved, was to put all crossings under an independent command, answerable directly to me. I gave General Salih Amiyn a group of very senior officers and set him to organizing Second Army crossings. Brigadier Muniyr Samih was given the staff and task for Third Army. 

I was back in Center Ten by 1630 hours, calmer than I had been since our assault began. The objective of The High Minarets the President's reiterated objective at so many Armed Forces Supreme Council meetings-had been achieved. We had a foothold in Sinai. It was not impregnable. No position is impregnable against a sufficiently determined assault, as our own crossing had just proved. But ours was so defended that, to dislodge us, Israel would have to pay a price they would almost certainly find unacceptable. 

I got to the Operations Room to learn General Isma`iyl wanted to see me. His question was the one I had feared. Could we not build on our success to develop our attack to the passes? 
 

So began the first catastrophic blunder by GHQ from which all other blunders followed. First some theory, then some figures. 

For planning purposes, we had always assumed that the enemy would penetrate our bridgehead and try to roll up our positions from the rear. It is, after all, the classic tactic. So is the defense to the maneuver: powerful reserves held in readiness to counter the enemy thrust, while the front-line forces redeploy to meet the new threat. Invariably, the main reason why defensive lines collapse after penetration the Maginot line in 1940, the Siegfried line in 1945 is an absence of mobile reserves. It is impossible to be strong everywhere. It is reserves tactical, operational, in the last resort, strategic that a commander counts on to halt an enemy penetration. A cautious commander might keep as many as a third of his forces in reserve. A commander taking risks might content himself with holding back only one-fifth. 

But accepted doctrine would be that reserves of less than  that are acceptable only in special circumstances and for short periods. 

The fact underlying everything which followed was that, in order to repel enemy counterattacks on the scale and with the speed that our worst estimates had forecast, the bulk of our armor had been sent to the front, at the expense of our strategic reserve. 

Egypt began the war with 1,700 tanks. We massed 1,350 on the Suez front, dispersed 100 to guard our Red Sea coast and various targets in the interior, and kept only 250 as our strategic reserve. Moreover, that 250 included the120 tanks of the Presidential Guard, which as ultimate guardians of the regime could only be used in an absolute emergency. Not all the 1,350 tanks allocated to the Suez front had gone into Sinai. The commanders of our two field armies had been authorized to cross with 1,020 of them. The other 330 were to be kept as our operational reserve west of the canal, ready to destroy any enemy penetration. They could not be committed to battle without the prior permission of GHQ. So our armored forces were: 

-Front line: 1,020 tanks. 

-Second line: 330 tanks. 

-Reserve: 250 tanks. 

The picture was now somewhat worse. The week of war up to and including October 13 had cost 240 of our tanks. Our front-line strength was down to 780. The same battles had cost the enemy 610 tanks; 300 under our first assault, 260 from their kamikaze charges of October 8-9, and then a final 50 lost over October 10-13. (Their losses fell sharply due to a switch to more cautious tactics on October 10). The difference was that the enemy had the reserves to restore their forces not once but twice. They had replaced the 300 lost in our first assault and the 260 lost over October 8-9. So against our 780 tanks the enemy now deployed about 900. That ratio was ample for our defensive purposes, so long as we still had our reserves. But we had nowhere near the superiority needed for attack. 

After the war the international media wrote what they evidently thought were complimentary things about me: tough, aggressive, dashing and so forth-even, so help me, professional. I suppose I might have been flattered had the epithets not been adduced as the reason why, it was alleged, I was in favor of a "quick thrust" to the passes even before October 14. The logic escapes me. One may be aggressive; one may have risked one's life for one's country. But why should that predispose one to gamble with the future of the armed forces and the fate of one's country? (I would dearly like to know who briefed the media. That there were briefings I am tolerably certain: the reports followed rumors circulated inside Egypt.)

The truth is quite to the contrary. From the moment Isma`iyil broached the idea of developing our attack to the passes, I opposed the idea passionately, continuously, and in front of many people. The argument began in Isma`iyil 's office in Center Ten that Thursday afternoon, October 11. I opposed the idea for all the reasons I had advanced to  Isma`iyl 's predecessor through the summer of 1971 when I had fought and won the case for a limited assault. I repeated to Isma`iyl  what I had said to Sadiq and then to Isma`iyl  himself when he took over as Minister of War on October 26, 1972: "The enemy air force is still too strong to be challenged by our own. And we do not have sufficient mobile SAM units to provide air cover." To Isma`iyl  now I added: "Let us learn the lesson from what happened to the First Infantry Brigade when it was caught for even a couple of hours without air cover. It was routed by air attack alone."