MARSHALLING THE CROSSING
 
 

EPISODE TEN

"War is not a tourist excursion." Al-Shazliy

Before our infantry could ever engage the enemy, they had to cross the canal. No equipment, no planning of bridgehead tactics, no covering fire from the west bank, could stave off disaster if the crossing went wrong.

The crossing was the harshest test of our planning in another sense as well. We could build copious margins into timings and capacities; but its detailed framework could have no margin for error. The density of the operation dictated that. A column of tanks arriving at the wrong point on the west bank, or turning the wrong way on the east bank, could cause disruption far down the line. It had to go right .

The battlefield constraints and our need to swiftly build and reinforce our initial assault forces dictated the scale of the operation. (In turn, our assessment of battlefield need derived from our estimates of the enemy's capacity to counter-attack.) But calculations of crossing timings and capacities then dictated how we broke the operation down.

As a first example, 32,000 troops had to cross on five fronts each three miles wide, in 12 waves at 15 minute intervals. Time allowed: three hours. To get each wave across fast enough we would need eight crossing points along each three mile sector. To maintain a regular shuttle at each crossing point, calculations of journey time plus turnaround time then showed we would need 18 boats per crossing. Total boats per sector: 144. Total boats on all five sectors: 720.

In five to seven hours our engineers must have cleared passages and laid ramps through the sand barrier. While they did that, ferries would have to be launched, and bridges constructed. How many?

Again, we worked backwards from battlefield needs. Our estimate was that, to sustain the bridgeheads, 1,000 tanks and 13,500 support vehicles would have to cross in the first ten hours after passages had been opened. The next factor was that we could expect bridges to take two hours longer to prepare than ferries. The final element in the calculation was that we knew, from exercises, that we could roll no more than 100 tanks or 200 other vehicles per hour over each bridge. Conclusions: seven ferries per sector total: 35. Two heavy duty bridges per sector to carry tanks and the like total: 10. A light bridge for each sector total: 5. Plus two pontoon bridges on each front for infantry total: 10. The light bridges were to serve as dummies for the heavy duty bridges. Their purpose was to attract enemy artillery fire and enemy air strikes, thereby reducing strikes on the major operating bridges. Nevertheless, the light bridges could carry very light transport, up to four tons (such as loaded jeeps).

To clear the passages and construct the ferries and bridges was the task of our engineer corps. I  have already sketched how they tackled one aspect of it. Our task, meanwhile, was to marshal our forces over the canal by those routes, and under fire, in such a way that fighting units those fanned smoothly into place and probably into immediate battle on the other side. To do it, we merely extended the dictum that everything was subordinated to the needs of the front line.

The first step was to divide our infantry into two groups: (1) those pursuing the assault on foot (they would cross in dinghies in the initial waves, or over a pontoon bridge if they were reinforcements) and, (2) those who were to ride into battle, which meant waiting for the ferries or bridges. The pontoon bridges (two for each division, ten altogether) were one meter wide and were to be ready at H + 2 Hours. They were to operate side by side with the dinghies to accelerate the ninth through the twelfth waves of infantry crossings, and later could be used to evacuate casualties.

The next step was to assign priorities to all vehicles, including those carrying infantry. As our dictum decreed, we assigned priority not by unit but by the needs of the front-line. We marshalled by function. Each front, it will be recalled, was the task of an Infantry division. We categorized the vehicles of each division into six subgroups, according to battlefield priority:
 

 
· PRIORITY ONE: Tanks, other combat vehicles, wireless units, heavy mortars, a very few support trucks  carrying ammunition. Total: about 200 tanks and 750 other vehicles.

· PRIORITY Two: Field artillery units, anti-aircraft units, more ammunition -carrying vehicles. Total: about 700 vehicles.

· PRIORITY THREE: The rest of each infantry battalion's support and administrative vehicles, plus those of each artillery and anti-aircraft battalion. Total: 600.

· PRIORITY FOUR: Support and administrative vehicles for each brigade. Total: about 400.

· PRIORITY FIVE: Support vehicles for division-level administrative units. Total: 250.

· PRIORITY SIX: Transport for the infantry who have already crossed on foot. These vehicles   would be forbidden to cross in the first 48 hours. Total: 800.

There remained the task of guiding each of these groups to, from and across the Canal. Once again, we broke it down.

On the east bank, up to three miles in from the canal, exit routes had been planned, each corresponding to one of the approach routes on the west bank, and to be coded with the same color and number. Military police crossing by dinghy while the passages were being cleared would set up these route-markers before the ferries and bridges opened.

Every soldier was to be briefed about this system of timing and routes. Each infantryman was to know the number of his boat, the names of those crossing with him, and their order of embarkation and disembarkation. The driver of any vehicle, be it a tank or a truck, was to know the chalk number of his vehicle (and therefore of the vehicle ahead of him), his start-up time, the color and number codes of his approach route and exit routes, and the name and code-sign of the mother unit he was to join.

Finally, to shepherd our forces through this network, we set up a Crossing Command: 500 officers and 1,000 enlisted men with 500 radio sets, 200 field telephones and a pre-laid, 500-mile field telephone system. I was head of the Crossing Command, with the Chief of Staff of each army and the Chief of Staff of each division, controlling the Crossing Command on their front. On the way to and from the canal, every man and vehicle would pass through checkpoints manned by the Crossing Command. The Crossing Command and only they were authorized to switch timings, routes and even crossing points as the situation might demand.

The biggest unknown the Command would have to confront was, of course, enemy interference. But our timings incorporated generous margins for that. Timings prescribed for the whole operation were double those achieved in daytime training and 150 percent of those attained by night.

One major source of delay could have been unexploded bombs. For years, our drills had been to evacuate the area around an unexploded bomb for a full 24 hours before tackling it. I thought this was stupid. It made an unexploded bomb vastly more disruptive than most of those that did go off. Besides, if the enemy learned of this, they would certainly include time-bombs in each cluster dropped. They could be certain that for 24 hours we could neither start repairs if they had damaged the target, nor even carry on as normal if they had not.

I issued new orders. One, unexploded bombs were to be dealt with immediately. Our men would have to risk that they might be time-bombs. Two, if an unexploded bomb lay near a road or a bridge, traffic flow would not halt. Weighing the known blast of Israeli bombs against the gaps decreed between vehicles in our convoys, we could guess that, if a bomb did explode while being defused, it would cost us the lives of 5-20 men. On the other hand, blocking a bridge for an hour would cost our forces at the front 100 tanks or 200 truckloads of other heavy equipment, with who knew what consequences. The same rule I applied to bombs on runways. Planes would ignore them in taking and landing. I regret risking lives in that fashion. But better to risk the lives of a few than the battle as a whole. War is not a tourist excursion.

Two other potent sources of delay I also overrode. Until early 1972, our thinking had been that the actual crossing would be carried out only by night. Before daybreak, we would dismantle and conceal our bridges, re-assembling them only after dark. As yet another tribute to enemy air superiority, this struck me as over-cautious. With smoke and dummy bridges, I reckoned we could sharply reduce the effectiveness of air strikes, while intensive air defenses at each crossing point could hope to inflict heavy losses upon enemy pilots.

That alone might not have made up my mind. But when I came to study details of the crossing the impossibility of the night only plan was clear.

We had approximately eight or nine hours of darkness to work with. If we started just after dark, the passages could be opened by H + 5 to H + 7 hours, giving the ferries just three hours to operate that first night. The bridges themselves need two hours after the opening of the passages to assemble and another two hours to dismantle. It would be impossible under cover of darkness to complete these tasks with enough time to use the bridges in the crossing. Without the use of the bridges on the first night, the ferries could only transport limited amounts of heavy equipment. During successive nights, still the bridges would only be left with four useful hours for crossing. With one bridge per division and under enemy fire the results would be very poor. A swift build-up would be impossible. I scrapped the plan. From mid-1972, while still assuming our initial assault would come by night, we planned to keep our bridges open the following day.

My other key decision was to allot two heavy bridges to each crossing front. Through 1971, the days of Operation-41 and the early work on the High Minarets, we had planned only one each. But when we kept getting those ever decreasing estimates of how rapidly the enemy might organize major counter-attacks, my inevitable response was to look for ways of speeding our build-up. I found that with only one bridge, and the possibility that even this might be delayed or damaged by enemy action, we stood no chance of getting enough tanks or mobile anti-tank weapons across even by H + 12 hours, by which time major enemy formations might have been in action for 4-6 hours. We could not expect our assault forces to repel them for longer than that. I doubled the number of bridges.

That, of course, doubled the work of our engineers, and also put us at the limit of our material resources. We had only 12 bridges at our disposal and 10 were to be laid the first day, vulnerable to air attack from then on. But it was a calculated risk. The faster our build-up, I was convinced, the greater our chance of success.
 

(To be continued)
 

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