EPISODE SIX

I have already explained why fewer than half of our forces were available for front-line combat. My job, nevertheless, encompassed all troops. To assist me I had the General Headquarters (GHQ), itself an apparatus with 5,000 officers and 20,000 enlisted men. At its apex were 40 generals who served as my direct assistants and subordinates. That was merely the first layer. The armed forces were split into 14 commands and military districts: Navy, Air Force, Air Defense, Second Army, Third Army, E Paratroops, Rangers, Red Sea District, Northern District, Western District, Central District, Middle District,  Southern District and Port Said. Between myself and the fighting man lay seven intermediate layers of command.

I determined to find a way of short circuiting that bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the first priority was training. A Chief of Staff is responsible for training of the armed forces as a whole. His main and immediate responsibility however, is the top-level training of the commands subordinate to him. I began with those I have listed.

A good deal had already been started. Since 1967 a series of command-level exercises had been carried out-some involving individual commands, others focusing on coordination between different commands under the code name Liberation. Five days after I took over as Chief of Staff I found myself, on May 21 1971 , directing Liberation 18. (My last such exercise was Liberation 35, which began on June 24, 1973.)

It was, no doubt, because of those years that the gulf between myself and the fighting man so concerned me .I have never been satisfied with issuing orders and receiving reports through chains of subordinates. I prefer direct and continuous contact with my junior officers and men in the front line. In previous commands, I managed it. As Battalion Commander I had seen my men every day; as Brigade Commander, once a week. As Commander of Special Forces most of them in one base, InshaaS.

I could still see everyone once a week. Even as Commander of the Red Sea District, with its 600-mile front, I had let no month go by without a tour of the troops. Now, as Chief of Staff of an enormous military machine scattered over more than 390,000 square miles, that tradition of systematic personal visits was clearly impossible. Yet it was essential to restore its essence. If I relied as Chief of Staff on the traditional chain of command, only one of the seven layers between me and the fighting man had to fail in its communications task and the work at GHQ could be disabled.

This was not a cult of personality. I had always been one of those field commanders passionately concerned with minor tactics: the battlefield skills of the smallest section, platoon or company. The best plan in the world is useless if the young officer or his men do not have the training or will to carry it out. Every commander, however exalted, whatever armies he disposes, must keep in touch with his "poor bloody infantry "know what they can do, sense what they can feel, imbue them in turn with what he feels and what he demands. Without that rapport he is no more than a "classroom commander," a master of maps maybe, but lost on the field. Many of the weaknesses in our armed forces, it was clear to me, stemmed from persistent failure in precisely this area. Our senior commanders had neglected - the training and development of the individual soldier. The rapid expansion of our armed forces since 1967, filling units with under-trained soldiers led by under trained officers, had merely deepened our plight. These .conditions had to be improved.
 
 

I adopted new methods and opened new channels I of communication. My first step was to begin a monthly meeting. To it, I decreed, would come my 40 assistant  generals, the heads of the 14 subordinate commands plus the next layer of command in each (the divisional commanders of the ground forces and so on). In all,  90-100 generals. Each meeting lasted six to eight hours, broken only by short coffee breaks and a collective a  deliberately convivial lunch in the GHQ cafeteria.

The system achieved all I had hoped. And I, at the same time, made direct contact with both chains of command, field and staff. But what to do about the layers still between me and the fighting man? These I decided to penetrate with directives.

All commanders use directives to a degree, but I tried a novel approach. Mine were, for a start, irregular, each one inspired by a specific incident, a particular mistake. But I tried to go beyond mere correction of error, important as that was. I tried to instill new ideas and new concepts. Every word was chosen with care. I put everything I had into their composition. The papers had differing grades of secrecy. Some were distributed only at brigade level, others to battalion; but most were directed to company commanders with instructions that they should pass on their message to their men. Whenever I visited the forces, I made a point of questioning all e if they knew the applicable directives. I was at the results. One of the happiest moments of my career came at the Suez front on October 8, two our crossing. Wherever I went, the troops cheered and shouted: "Directive 41, we did it!" In directive 41, I had laid down how our infantry divisions would cross the canal.

With directives, I could reach company commanders. they in turn were supposed to instruct, command, and control the men under their command. But armed forces a million men require roughly 10,000 company commanders or their equivalent. In no way could I ensure tall of them would be efficient. So I decided to establish direct contact even with non-commissioned officers and men.

To do this I wrote pamphlets, mini-booklets really, of pocket-size. Six I wrote and distributed before the battle. The titles indicate their range: Soldier's Guide; Driver's Guide; Observation Post Guide; Military Traditions; Guide to Safety if Lost in the Desert; and Our Belief in God and in our Cause is our Road to Victory. The first and last were each printed in 1.2 million copies so every man would get one; and my orders were strict that the latter, which was distributed in midsummer, three months before the battle, must be carried at all times, since none could know when battle would come.

When the Israelis later found it on prisoners taken in the fighting, their Zionist allies abroad tried to twist my phrases to accuse me of ordering our men to kill prisoners in cold blood. That is a lie, as a reading of the text by any impartial international group would confirm. I could never give such an order. It is against my religion. It is against my entire ethos as a soldier. To kill a prisoner would be an act of cowardice; I could never order brave men to be cowards. [1] 

In retrospect, I think that the two pamphlets issued after the cease fire-my seventh and eighth-will be of future importance. Pamphlet No. 7, Guide to Junior Officers in Infantry and mechanized Infantry Formations, was published on December 5, 1973. The eighth, Guide to Junior Officers in Armored Formations, I revised and approved for publication a week later, on December 11, the day before my dismissal. Since it was one of my last official acts, I am glad it will have lasting value. Both pamphlets were based on the experiences of the October War. We had by then studied our own failings. We had also studied the enemy's, evaluating every Israeli tactic both from our encounters with them and from interrogation of the prisoners we took. We found the Israeli prisoners, for the most part, eager to talk. The assault had evidently shattered so many of their illusions that they seemed to feel a pressing need to justify themselves to us, a not uncommon psychological phenomenon.

I regard my seventh and eighth pamphlets as being of paramount importance for two further reasons. The first I previously mentioned as a consideration driving me toward a limited assault: to learn war, fight war. The October War taught us modern warfare; those pamphlets codify its lessons. The second reason I have already diagnosed as the root cause of many of our weaknesses in battle: the persistent failure of senior commanders to train and develop the individual soldier. Our junior officers were equally neglected. I commonly met young lieutenants or captains, sergeants even, who could discourse lucidly on battalion or brigade tactics but floundered when questioned on the conduct of a section or platoon. It was not their fault; it reflected the bias of their training. Those last. two pamphlets, properly used, will continue the reforms I began.

Young officers need more than knowledge, of course. They need to learn leadership-how to bear responsibility and make decisions. Yet our practice had always been to keep junior officers under stultifying strict supervision .was time to loosen the reins.

I instituted "Adventure Training": sending young officers and their men into the wilds equipped to fend for themselves while completing some self-selected task. I first had the idea as our defense attaché in London in 1961-63. (It is of course a recognized part of training in Western armies.) But when I decided to introduce it in 1972, some eyebrows were raised. The arguments for it were clear, though. Only by getting away from their commanders could young officers learn individual responsibility. Traveling and camping together for days or even weeks would strengthen ties between men and between officers and enlisted men. These tasks were not to be boringly military; an element of recreation was also to be present: trekking to some distant place of interest, perhaps, or a project to explore or study something. My directive authorized the use of military transport, food and first-aid packs for these adventure groups. I also decreed that reports had to be submitted afterwards and would count toward a young man's career prospects. To spur the scheme I personally examined the first batch. The best, I recall, was from Lieutenant `Atif `Abd al-Baqiy al-Sa`iyd. On September 25, 1972, I had the pleasure of receiving him and his divisional commander in my office and presenting the young man with a watch.

NEXT: EPISODE EIGHT 
THE BUILDING OF THE ARMED FORCES