THE SOUTHERN FRONT

On 1 July 1973, Major-General Shmuel Gonen was appointed GOC Southern Command, replacing Major-General Ariel Sharon who had retired from the regular army to go into farming and politics. A tough, abrasive Sabra,10 born in Jerusalem, Gonen had spent the early years of his life in an orthodox seminary, a yeshiva. In the Six Day War, he had commanded the 7th Brigade in a series of battles across the Sinai Desert, which marked him out as one of the outstanding commanders in the Israeli forces. Wounded several times, an avid marksman with a large collection of small arms, he was known as a strict disciplinarian who could behave at times in an impossible manner towards his officers and yet who inspired in his men a confidence that led them to follow him in battle. ‘Gorodish’, as he continued to be known in the army by his original family name, was regarded with a mixture of respect and dislike. He was a stickler for the little matters that make up discipline and went out of his way to combat the negligence that had begun to affect the Israel Defence Forces. He had had many close brushes with death and was known to be fearless under fire.

Southern Command was responsible for the whole of the southern part of Israel — the Negev and the Sinai — behind the Suez Canal. 180-240 yards wide and 50-60 feet deep,11 the Canal constitutes what General Dayan described as ‘one of the best anti-tank ditches available’. The east bank is a wind-swept desert, while the west bank, along which a sweetwater canal runs, has a cultivated belt running parallel to it. The banks are steep and concrete-reinforced, the highest level of the water being six feet below the bank. Earth and soil (removed both by the digging of the Canal and by subsequent dredging operations) was concentrated along the east bank in the form of a dyke some 18-30 feet high. (Israeli engineers had raised this rampart at the critical areas to a height of 75 feet.) The tides change frequently, the difference in the water level varying between one foot and six feet in various parts of the Canal, a fact of great importance in carrying out crossing operations.

From the Canal, the desert rises in an undulating manner for some five miles to a line of sandy hills and thence stretches back to a mountainous and hilly ridge, through which a number of passes, such as the Mitla Pass

And the Gidi Pass in the south, lead. The northern area from about Kantara to Port Said is a salty marsh area, criss-crossed by a number of routes that the Israeli Army had constructed. Parallel to the Suez Canal along the entire route runs a road bearing the codename ‘Lexicon’ on the Israeli military maps; parallel to it some five miles to the east runs a road known as ‘Artillery Road’. (The various outstanding features in the desert had been given codenames, as had the various fortifications along the Canal, and they will be referred to by these in this account.) The area is criss-crossed by a considerable network of roads, both lateral and perpendicular.

With his appointment as GOC Southern Command, Gonen handed over command of his reserve division to his predecessor in Southern Command, General Sharon. Gonen was most unhappy with much of what he found in Southern Command, especially with the staff work and the level of discipline, and he began to institute a number of changes. On reviewing the defence system along the Suez Canal, he proposed the reopening of fourteen fortifications that had been blocked up, and received approval in respect of a number of them.

During the first months of his appointment, Gonen set priorities in the construction budget in his Command, allowing first of all for the construction of tank ramps along the second line of defence, thus enabling tanks to engage in depth from a second line an enemy crossing the Canal. Major-General Mandler, commander of the division holding the Canal line, had been pressing for this approval for over a year, but it had been delayed in the Ministry of Defence. A second priority was given to preparation of the infrastructure necessary for a possible Israeli crossing of the Suez.

During his visits along the Canal, Gonen noted that the Egyptians had elevated the ramp on their side to a height of some 130 feet, from which they could look straight over the Israeli rampart and down on to the Israeli fortifications and the tank ramps protecting them: these had been out of sight to the Egyptians when first built. The raised rampart also afforded them observation of the second line of defence along the so-called Artillery Road five to eight miles back. Gonen’s answer to this was to order the building of earthworks that would hide activity in the second line of defence from the eyes of the Egyptians; he also ordered the construction of long-range observation towers 230 feet high to enable the Israeli forces to look over into the Egyptian front-line area. But it was to prove too late.

When General Gavish had been in command, underground oil storage tanks were ordered to be constructed under the strongpoints, with pipes leading from them so that the Canal could be sprayed with a film of oil that could then be ignited electrically from inside the fortification and turn parts of the Canal into a moat of fire. In 1971, however, when only two such installations had been built, it was decided that the speed of the current in the Canal would inhibit the effectiveness of this device, so the construction of additional facilities was discontinued. Nevertheless, when the General Staff decided to abandon the project early in 1971, Southern Command was authorized to test one installation in the Canal in order to create an appropriate psychological effect on the Egyptians. Impressed

They certainly were, with the result that they devoted much thought and planning over the years to overcome this ‘obstacle’.

For years, the Egyptians kept a close watch on the system, which gradually silted up and became clogged with sand. On 11 July 1973, the Egyptian 8th Infantry Brigade intelligence issued a circular on the subject: according to the document (which fell into Israeli hands during the subsequent war), the Israelis had neglected the equipment and all maintenance activities had ceased since the end of 1971. The Egyptians had noted the construction of twenty such facilities along the Canal, but patrols sent over to investigate had discovered them all to be dummies. The pipes in the equipment which had been identified had been cut or bent under the weight of the earth piled on top, so that no liquid could flow through them; they were covered in rust and clogged with sand, while construction work on the fortifications had closed up whole parts of the system. The summary concluded, correctly as it happened, that the Israelis had abandoned the idea of using the equipment and were leaving it in the area for psychological warfare purposes. Nevertheless, much was subsequently made by Ahmed Ismail, the Egyptian Minister of War, and by General Shazli, the Egyptian Chief of Staff, of the ingenuity with which they had neutralized this equipment all along the Canal. Indeed the story of how Egypt planned to deal with this problem and how ‘in fact’ it was overcome was the subject of long and detailed descriptions by Ismail and Shazli after the war and of admiring descriptions by many war reporters.

When he came to the Command in July, General Gonen decided to try to revive the system. He gave orders to his chief of engineers to check the two existing installations, to clean them out, repair the tanks and find cheaper alternatives to achieve the same purpose. A simpler and more effective method was devised and tested in September, but in the event there was no time in which to apply it. In the course of the preparations on the eve of war on 5 October, Gonen gave instructions for these two systems to be set into operation. An engineering team headed by Second Lieutenant Shimon Tal reached the Hizayon strongpoint at Firdan on the morning of Saturday 6 October, and explained to the men in the position how to operate the system. Since the controls were in the fortification that had been blocked up and de-activated, the troops were told that they would have to run along the Canal several hundred yards, open the pipe manually and throw a phosphorescent grenade into the oil on the water. Having explained the system at Hizayon, Tal continued southwards to Matzmed at Deversoir. But, while he was demonstrating how to operate the installation, the Egyptian artillery barrage fell on them.