EPISODE ELEVEN

As I mentioned previously, before our infantry could ever engage the enemy, they had to cross the canal. But before they could assemble for the crossing, they had to be mobilized, and mobilized in such a way as not to warn the enemy. Yet our mobilization system was, by any criteria, one of the worst in the world. Paradoxically, our solution to this turned out to be one of the most useful elements in our campaign to lull the enemy before October.

Mobilization became a problem for us only in June 1972. Up until then, we had no reserves. In theory, a man served in our reserves for nine years after finishing his period of conscription. In reality, our reserves were already in the army. A political decision had been made after 1967 that draftees in the armed forces would be retained, no matter when their period of conscription expired, until we had regained our lands. The War of Attrition demonstrated that this was a military necessity in order to meet the massive manpower needs required to guard vital installations throughout the country against enemy raiding parties. By the middle of 1972, however, with our armed forces standing at close to a million men, pressing, reasons of economy and morale dictated that we transfer some to the reserves. Draftees had been in for more than six years, with no idea when they could look forward to release. For university graduates desperate to start their careers the problem was particularly acute. In June 1972 the decision was made to transfer 30,000 to the reserves on July 1. The question which promptly face FL me was', how could we ever get them back again?
 

The faults in our existing mobilization system we're glaring. A card was kept on each reservist, giving vital statistics, training and skills. Men were summoned on the basis of these. But the card recorded only a reservist's place of birth, not the address he had moved to after leaving the forces. (The impossibility of tracing many reservists can be imagined.) The cards were often wrong a reservist trained on one weapon might find himself in a unit equipped with another; unskilled men would be confronted with highly technical tasks. No computer even automated sorter handled the cards, and the manual sorting was so imprecise that too many were frequently summoned in one specialization, too few in another.

The marshalling of the men was then horribly over centralized. Every reservist had to report to mobilization centers in Cairo, where he was checked, given a kit a rifle, and sent to a particular training center (infantry armor, artillery) from which he would be assigned to unit. It was usually a unit he had never served in before of people he had never seen before. Even worse, officers in charge were often, in the way of the world, those whose previous commanders had been anxious to get rid of them. The system ensured, in sum, that with maximum possibility of error, embittered or incompetent officers would end up commanding a group of confused strangers. Morale and discipline were as bad as one could have predicted.
 

For comparison, I looked at three of the most efficient mobilization systems in the world: those of Switzerland, Sweden and Israel. The Swiss system I discarded. It allows a reservist to keep his uniform and personal weaponry at home, something our political authorities would never accept. Besides, the Swiss Armed Forces are overwhelmingly infantry, which are the easiest to mobilize.
 

 The Israeli system, I discovered, is essentially an amended version of the Swedish system, the amendments stemming largely from the fact that the Swedish system reflects the Swedes' determination to mobilize only for defensive purposes.
 

In Sweden, all heavy weapons are stockpiled in the areas where they will be used (that is, deployed according to the Swedish defense plan). Those manning the equipment must also live in the area or nearby. If one moves away, someone else local takes his place. Every reserve unit is a continuously evolving but always local entity. It is a marvelous system. It cuts mobilization time to a minimum; annual training is easy; the men in a unit will almost all know each other; and it is hard to see how the incentive of defending your country by defending your home could be bettered. On the debit side, the system lacks flexibility, and from it an enemy could piece together the Swedish defense plan. I decided to modify the Swedish system to our peculiar needs. The nationwide aspect of Sweden's reserves was irrelevant. The threat to us comes from Israel; our concentrations have to face them. But we could adopt the idea of consistently-manned reserve units congregating on weapons stockpiled near their point of deployment. Since our conscription law, when applied, gave us nine years reserve service from each ex-draftee, my plan was gradually to build these new reserve units over nine years, increasing them by one-ninth each year, and thereafter replenishing them annually with fresh reservists to replace those whose service was up. Even to lay down the framework for this plan might take a couple of years, though. Meanwhile, I decided to keep our regular units about 15 percent under war strength and to boost them with reservists, the reservists being those units' own former draftees.

Our first step was to drastically overhaul the accuracy of our cards; then to introduce automation and computers so I could call up reserves by unit, by date of release from conscript service, by specialization or even by sub-specialization. Our next step was to open 100 mobilization centers covering our most populous areas. (The plan was to have 350-400 eventually covering all Egypt.) A soldier transferring to the reserve was to deliver his uniform to his neighborhood center. On being called up, he would go there, exchange his civilian clothes for his uniform, and go to his unit. In the interim phase, that would be his old regular unit, where his old job and old comrades would be waiting for him. In time, though, he would go to his specially-formed reserve unit, whose weapons and equipment would have been stored and maintained by a cadre of regulars. We reckoned these reserve units could be functioning within 72 hours.
 

Our interim system went into operation in June 1972, in time for the first batch of new reservists since 1967. (We could not set up the initial 100 mobilization centers in time, so not all that first wave were caught by the system.) Another wave was demobilized at the end of December 1972, a third at the end of June 1973: in all, more than 100,000 officers and enlisted men. We immediately practiced recalling them. The system worked superbly. I had estimated that it would take a reservist 48 hours to reach his old regular unit; but we found that, with practice, a high percentage could report within 24 hours (usually, I was pleased to learn, to considerable festivity from their old comrades). The units were ready for battle in 48 hours.

From January to October 1, 1973, we summoned and then released our reservists 22 times, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for two weeks. The practice perfected the system. More important, the enemy got used to our mobilizations. They became routine training.

On September 27, 1973, we began yet another mobilization, telling the reservists they would be released on October 7. We summoned another batch on September 30, saying we would release them on October 10. On October 4, as a final touch, we demobilized 20,000 reservists (some of those who had been called on September 27). The enemy was lulled. Once again, I was relieved but surprised. Careful logging would have revealed that in those last two mobilizations we had pulled back, the first time, everyone demobilized since June 1972. The war itself, in other words, was the first complete  of our new system. It worked. I sometimes ask myself  how, without it, we could ever have fooled the enemy?
 

(To be continued)