EPISODE NINE

In essence it would be like an airborne operation, where paratroopers are dropped in the enemy's rear and, relying solely upon what they can carry-arms, ammunition, equipment, provisions-are ordered to hold out for one or two days before relief by the advancing main force. Except that paratroopers can usually expect surprise to provide a lull before the counter-attack, whereas our infantry should expect assault by armor supported by air strikes virtually from the moment of crossing.

Equipment was available. We could give a man antitank guided weapons (ATCWs) to repel armor, and portable SAM-7s against low-flying aircraft. We could give him ammunition, food and water for 24 hours. We could give him anti-tank mines to consolidate a group of foxholes into a strongpoint. But how could we expect him to carry all that?

It was a real headache. A soldier cannot carry more than 60-65 pounds without a marked drop in his performance-and that weight included everything. Repeating to myself the old paratroopers' dictum "maximum firepower, minimum frills," and with lists in front of me of what every soldier in an airborne brigade carried I sat down and began the endless task of juggling weights:

First, survival needs. For 24 hours, plus a margin in case he hit trouble or got lost, each man would need five pounds of food and four and a half pints of water, a steel helmet, field kit and minimum clothing. Total: 25 lbs. Margin for weaponry: 40 lbs.

The solution was to distribute the loads among groups of infantry men detailed to stick together as assault teams (which sounds easy until you try to ensure that each member of the team can still carry out individual tactical tasks). Even so, I did not succeed. When the final fists for each infantry division were drawn up, individual loads varied between 60 lbs. and 75 lbs. and, in a few cases, even heavier.

That was unsatisfactory. But while I brooded on it, some improvements could be made. Our standard field kit, for instance, was unsuitable for the 2,000 officers and 30,000 men of the initial assault force. Among its other deficiencies it was too heavy, while the water bottle was too small. I took our needs to the Quartermaster General of the Armed Forces, General Nawad Sa`iyd. By December 1971 General Sa`iyd had managed to give me 50,000 four-and-a-half pint water bottles. Refining the rest of the kit proved harder. The multitude of different: tasks confronting different soldiers, plus the need to cut the weight problem to expedite the assault teams, meant that our men would be carrying scores of different loads. The ideal field kit would vary with each load-an administrative nightmare. It took us almost a year and a good number of field trials before, on July 12, 1972, I approved five types of infantry field kits, cut back to the bare essentials. Before October that year, the indefatigable General Sa`iyd had delivered 50,000 kits, enough for our 32,000 assault infantry with 50 percent to spare.

In all we did, we sought simplicity. By July 1972, for example, our assault infantry was equipped not only with Infra-red and star-light scopes for night-fighting but also with welder's goggles. During the War of Attrition, the enemy had taken to mounting tanks and trucks with blinding xenon floodlights to dazzle and immobilize our commando teams operating at the rear of enemy lines. Welder's goggles would neutralize their effect. The first wave of infantry were also given simple rope ladders, 1,440 of them, to hang down the sand rampart for the next wave to scramble up.

Weight remained the problem. To get loads even as light as they were, we had dropped essential equipment. Our portable support weapons would have far too little ammunition-barely enough, I calculated, for an hour of heavy combat. The assault force would have no mines, no mine detectors, no explosives; no ranging instruments or radios to spot and direct covering artillery fire from the west bank; no signs and direction markers to guide support units to them by day or night. We needed another answer

The enemy gave it to me. When I went as Commander to the Red Sea District in January 1970, I had begun by studying all previous operations of the enemy in my area. One had been an artillery barrage of Port Safagah, a few months before I arrived. Puzzled, I went to look at the craters, still readily visible. They could only have been made by 120mm mortar fire. So it had been a raid by an airborne mortar team. Knowing the range of the 120mm mortar and looking for helicopter landing-sites I would have chosen had I been the enemy commander, it was not difficult to pinpoint the two likeliest spots on a map. We drove out to find the landing site, and not far away, the tell-tale evidence of mortar firings. Among the abandoned gear was a crude, four-wheeled cart.

As ex-commander of our special forces, I was impressed. It was simple, ingenious, useful. I loaded it onto my car, took it to my HQ and, calling in my Chief Technical Officer, ordered six just like it. He looked it over and said he could do better. Only the wheels posed problems: the armed forces had none so tiny. They reminded him of Vespa wheels-Vespas being those small scooters much favored by our youth. I gave him leave to hunt in El Kanto, the Cairo market for secondhand car parts. When we had his first prototype, we experimented to find optimum loads and dimensions; then we made another five. We found that the most that two men could drag over two or three miles of rough country was 375 lbs.

Now, as Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces struggling to equip our assault troops, those carts came back to me. On July 21, 1971, my diary records  that I called in the director of GHQ's. vehicles department, General Gamal Sidqiyy, showed him one of our Red Sea carts and said: "I want 1,000 like it." A few days later, Sidqiyy, came back. Wheels were still the problem. Even if we emptied El Kanto, we could fit no more than 100 carts. We would have to make the wheels or import them from Italy and that would take six months. I agreed.

By January 1972  I had my 1,000 carts; October 1972 my second thousand; by April 1973, I had 3,000. In October 1973, our infantry stormed the canal pulling 2,240 carts behind them, carrying 336 tons of war material. On the basis that a man can carry 40 pounds over and above his own survival needs, we would have needed 22,400 unarmed men-porters-to carry what our assault force drew with them.

Equipment could powerfully increase our infantry's capabilities. But the central question remained. Could 32,000 officers and men, crossing on five separate fronts each four miles wide, stand a good chance of carrying our their mission to destroy the Bar-Lev line and repel counter-attacks? Especially when the enemy's front-line force of 360 tanks (three brigades) would be coming into action in two hours at most, while the Israeli Sinai force of another four armored brigades and four infantry brigades might be expected, on our DID's estimate, in six to eight hours? Nor, in weighing that, could we consider our 32,000 men as a unified bloc, reaching the far bank in a single bound. They would-be going over in waves, each differing in size, arms and equipment. The first assault wave, the biggest, would be 4,000 men. The rest would follow in another 11 waves, 15 minutes apart.

Idecided the odds were too high. I made two decisions to reduce them. The first was that we must support our troops on the east bank with the heaviest possible fire from the west bank, especially anti-tank fire. The second, was that our troops would have to stay within range of that fire, which meant we would have to curb their advance still further. They would have to halt no more than three miles east of the Canal. There they must wait for tanks and other support units, which would start to reach them about H + 10 Hours. Only after the arrival .of this support and the necessary reorganization and regrouping, would our forces enlarge their bridgeheads.

Even so, our estimate remained unchanged that by H + 18 Hours each infantry division should have consolidated a bridgehead five miles deep and ten miles wide along the canal.

With all the adjustments needed to tailor equipment and tactics to the infantry's capabilities, therefore, our basic scenario emerged unchanged. The battle of the crossing would only be won 18 hours from the start of our assault.

(To be continued)
 

NEXT: EPISODE ELEVEN  
MARSHALLING THE CROSSING