At an orders group that General Mandler had convened on the Saturday morning, all operations plans including ‘Shovach Yonim’ had been recapitulated. Because of the information that had been received that the attack would begin at 18.00 hours, the forces were to deploy in accordance with the ‘Shovach Yonim’ plan not later than 17.00 hours, but on no account before 16.00 hours, in case the forward movement of Israeli forces should lead to a deterioration and an escalation that could bring the Egyptians to open fire. However, before the Israeli moves could be set in motion, the Egyptian tank attack had begun.
At Mandler’s headquarters, the picture of the situation along the Canal was confused. His armoured forces were moving towards the Canal but there was no clear indication of their situation. The general estimate had been that the main brunt of the attack would fall on the northern sector, so the armoured brigade under Colonel Gaby Amir was directed to the north. Colonel Amnon Reshefs brigade moved westwards in the centre while, in the southern sector. Colonel Dan Shomron’s brigade was ordered through the Gidi Pass to a position south of the Bitter Lakes.
In the northern sector of the front as Amir’s forces moved forward, they were attacked, so he divided and attempted to link up with the Mifreket fortification at the northern end of El-Balah Island. As he advanced, he learned that the forces in the area had been practically wiped out. Another part of his brigade moved east of Kantara to link up with the fortification known as ‘Milano’. Three times during the Saturday night, units of his force linked up with the Mifreket stronghold. Early on Sunday morning. General Kalman Magen, who had assumed command of the sector north of Kantara, authorized Amir to withdraw his force with his casualties and to evacuate the Mifreket fortification. The attempt to reach the fortifications had caused losses that left Amir’s entire brigade with only some twenty tanks. Amir gradually extricated what was left of his force and moved back to reorganize.
The central sector of the Canal, from El-Balah Island to Ras Sudar in the south, was the responsibility of Colonel Amnon Reshefs brigade. Tall, fair, with an owlish look behind his spectacles, and distinguished by his neatly-kept handlebar moustache, he had commanded his brigade for over a year. As ordered, Reshefs tanks rushed forward to their pre-planned positions — only to find that Egyptian tank-hunting units had occupied them and were launching forth a hail of RPG bazooka shells. At the same time, from the rampart on the Egyptian side overlooking the Israeli approaches, Israeli tanks were engaged by tanks and Sagger anti-tank missiles. The Israeli tank units fought and suffered their first casualties. The Egyptian infantry fought stubbornly. Hundreds were killed by the advancing tanks, but the wave of Egyptian infantry continued to advance. Of the two companies of Reshefs brigade in the area facing Ismailia and Firdan, only two tanks continued to fight. They held the crossroads opposite Firdan all night against 50 Egyptian tanks. All day long on 7 October, the fighting continued as Reshefs brigade was gradually worn down.
To the south of Reshefs brigade was Dan Shomron’s brigade. Shomron was a well-built, determined-looking Sabra born on a kibbutz, who had commanded a crack paratroop battalion. (Years later, this able young officer was to attain international renown when he commanded the famous Israeli rescue operation of the hostages held at Entebbe.) He too had been ordered not to move his tanks forward until the afternoon and, as they were preparing to move, Egyptian aircraft swooped in to attack his camp at 14.(X) hours. Shomron divided his forces, sending one battalion through the Mitla Pass, one battalion through the Gidi Pass and a third one in between the two, in case either one of them had been blocked by the enemy. His brigade was now responsible for a front some 35 miles wide, stretching from the junction of the two Bitter Lakes south to Ras Masala, some twelve miles south of Suez. Facing his sector was the Egyptian 19th Infantry Division, 7th Infantry Division, 6th Mechanized Division, and behind it the 4th Armoured Division. These forces totalled some 650 tanks, in addition to 130 Marine Brigade, which was due to cross the Bitter Lakes in amphibious vehicles in an attempt to block the Mitla and Gidi Passes. The Egyptians thus outnumbered Shomron by over six to one in tanks.
Shomron’s first objective was to link-up with the various Israeli fortifications that were being besieged by the Egyptians. By the evening of 6 October, his units had reached all the fortifications with the exception of the one on the quay at Port Tewfik, whose approaches had been mined and were swarming with Egyptian anti-tank ambushes. As he fought back and blocked the Egyptian attempts to cross in his sector, he pleaded with Mandler either to evacuate the fortifications or to reinforce them; but no authority was granted. The intensity of the battle that Shomron fought can be gauged from the fact that when he had moved through the Mitla and Gidi Passes on Saturday afternoon at 16.00 hours, he did so with a force of approximately 100 tanks; by 08.00 hours on the morning of Sunday the 7th, he was left with 23 tanks. Two-thirds of all the losses incurred in men and vehicles by his brigade during the War were lost on that first night. He was now authorized to break contact with the fortifications and concentrate on holding the Egyptian advance. He had three batteries of artillery and faced 75 batteries of Egyptian artillery.
Realizing that he was outnumbered on all points, Shomron concentrated the remnants of his brigade into one armoured fist and decided to launch a pre-emptive attack on the fast-growing Egyptian concentrations. Carefully husbanding his forces, firing at long range in a classic battle of fire and movement, he did not give the Egyptians a chance to develop any effort against him. On Tuesday 9 October, the Egyptians mounted a first concentrated attack of two mechanized brigades across Artillery Road in the direction of the Mitla Pass. In a battle of manoeuvre, Shomron counterattacked, destroying twenty Egyptian tanks and many armoured personnel vehicles. The Egyptians withdrew in disarray.
The impression at divisional headquarters by Saturday evening was that the armoured forces had reached all the fortifications, apart from those located on the narrow dyke north of Kantara, at Firdan bridge and on the
Quayside at Port Tewfik. There were five tanks in the latter position, but the position itself was by then cut off.
In the first few hours of the fighting, Brigadier-General Pino, who had become Mandler’s second-in-command two months earlier, had tried to piece together a coherent picture. Unable to do so from the reports, he had taken a helicopter and flown along Artillery Road as far south as the Gidi and Mitla Passes. On numerous occasions, the helicopter had had to avoid Egyptian MiGs and M18 helicopters, but he-had succeeded in bringing back what he believed to be the first comparatively clear picture of the situation to his divisional commander. By 01.00 hours on the morning of the 7th, the picture that Gonen received in his headquarters was that the Israeli forces had returned to the water line apart from the area north of Kantara, two fortifications In the central sector and the quayside position at Port Tewfik. Neither Gonen nor Mandler felt any urgency about evacuating the strongpoints along the Canal at this time.
The problem of inaccurate front-line reporting was highlighted by the fact that, on Saturday evening, the situation on the ground as reflected in the picture received at Command Headquarters and GHQ was a satisfactory one. Hence, there was no point in giving orders to evacuate the fortifications because the reports indicated that the Israeli tanks had reached the Canal on Saturday evening and had linked up with them. At
18.00 hours on Saturday evening. General Elazar spoke to Gonen, advising him that if there were fortifications that did not obstruct the main effort of the enemy and only endangered the occupants, he was authorized to evacuate them. He emphasized that he did not want to defend the whole Canal by means of these fortifications, but rather to hold strongpoints that would hinder the development of the enemy’s major efforts. At this point Elazar was thinking two days ahead. Realizing that he could influence little of what was happening on the ground at any given moment (except in special circumstances), he understood that the holding battle would be a very difficult one and that the Egyptians would be bound to penetrate in some places. On Sunday, the holding battle would continue, but he was already thinking in terms of a series of counterattacks on Monday. At midnight on Saturday, as soon as he was satisfied that the communications system from the forward headquarters was effective, Gonen moved forward from his headquarters in Beersheba into his advanced headquarters at Um Kusheiba in the forward area of the Sinai. All night he received reports that tanks were patrolling between the Canal fortifications and were linking up with them. In the northern sector near the Mifreket strongpoint, Amir’s forces reported that they had knocked out an Egyptian bridge.
All through the night of 6/7 October, the Egyptian bridging units had worked feverishly establishing bridges across the Canal. The next day these bridges came under heavy and persistent attack by the Israeli Air Force and many of them were seriously damaged. However, their sectional construction and the ease with which they could be handled allowed, as General Shazli was later to point out, for a very rapid replacement of damaged sections and also enabled the Egyptians, when any area came
Under heavy attack, to float the bridge down the Canal to an alternative site or to lash it to one of the banks during daylight hours. Thus, the Israeli claims that nearly all the bridges had been hit on the first day were correct, as indeed were the Egyptian claims that forces were crossing on their bridges without let-up.
On Sunday morning, the Egyptians renewed their attack. Now the very alarming results of the night’s fighting were dawning on the Israeli Command: Amir’s forces were left with ten tanks, and Mandler reported that, of the 290 tanks with which he had started fighting, he was left with but one-third of that number along the entire length of the Suez Canal. Egyptian pressure was growing as, foiled in their attempt to hose open the Israeli rampart by water jet in the southern sector, they began to bulldoze it. The reserves were far away while the regular holding forces were being worn down. Without air support, Gonen saw no solution until the reserves arrived. Mandler repeatedly requested air support, and Gonen advised him that help would arrive within twenty minutes. T don’t have twenty minutes’, came Mandler’s tired reply. At 06.45 hours, the Israeli Air Force made a number of preparatory strikes against the missile system before coming in for close support, and then suddenly General Peled, the commander of the Air Force, notified Gonen that there would be no more air support because of the situation in the north. During the morning, Gonen advised Peled: ‘Unless you deploy your force here I have nothing with which to hold the attack.’ At 09.30 hours, following the approval of the Chief of Staff, he authorized Mandler to evacuate the fortifications where feasible.
Meanwhile, mobilization in Israel was being accomplished at full speed. As the various headquarters and formations were formed, a new allocation of responsibility along the Suez Canal was made by General Gonen. In addition to Mandler’s divisional headquarters, two further divisions were activated, one under command of Major-General Avraham (‘Bren’) Adan and the other under Major-General Ariel (‘Arik’) Sharon. Thus, by Sunday afternoon, the northern sector was held by Adan, the central sector by Sharon and the southern sector by Mandler.
Gonen ordered Adan to evacuate the fortifications at approximately
11.00 hours on the 7th. The Minister of Defence, General Dayan, visited the Command Headquarters and recommended Gonen to abandon the fortifications and forward positions now held by the forces of Southern Command, and to withdraw to the high ground passing through the mountains of Jebel Ma’ara and Jebel Yalek. Gonen agreed to the order to withdraw from the fortifications and issued it, but did not accept Dayan’s recommendations with regard to the extent of withdrawal. Meanwhile, as the reserves arrived, most of Southern Command by the evening of 7 October was deployed along Artillery Road, with reserves along the main lateral road. The Egyptian advance was being held all along the line. That afternoon, Dayan recommended to the Prime Minister a withdrawal to a more readily defensible line, namely the line of the Mitla and Gidi Passes in the south (and, on the Syrian front, withdrawing from the Golan Heights and consolidating before the escarpment overlooking the Jordan
Valley). General Elazar refused to accept the Defence Minister’s recommendation, but at the same time vetoed the recommendation by Sharon to counterattack immediately and to cross the Suez Canal.
By midday on 7 October, the Egyptian 7th Infantry Division had crossed with all its forces south of the Bitter Lakes, as had the 25th Armoured Brigade. Until sundown, Egypt’s forces were organized for defence against counterattacks, for a further advance into the Sinai and a deepening of the bridgeheads to a depth of between four and five miles; during this period, all units of the infantry division crossed and, that night, the armoured brigades attached to the infantry divisions crossed too. By the evening of Monday 8 October, the infantry divisions (with an addition of a tank brigade to each division) were in position in full strength on the east bank of the Canal. After fending off the anticipated Israeli counterattacks, the forces attempted to widen each bridgehead, having been ordered to fan out and meet each other, to a depth of six to eight miles. Following this, a mechanized brigade of the 6th Mechanized Division crossed on the southern flank of the 19th Infantry Division (the southernmost division) in readiness to move down Wadi Sudar, when the attack eastwards would be developed.
The next phase, ending by the morning of Thursday 11 October, was to be devoted entirely to the defensive — to causing the Israelis maximum possible losses in their counterattacks. At the same time, the Egyptians planned to push down the coast of the Sinai towards Ras Sudar and Sharm El-Sheikh. Then, from Thursday until Monday 15 October, the 4th and 21st Armoured Divisions were to cross the bridgehead to mount a major attack, the main effort of which was to be directed towards the capture of the nerve centre of Refidim (Bir Gafgafa). The 4th Armoured Division with the 25th Armoured Brigade was to advance from the area of the Gidi Pass through Um Mahza to Refidim; the northern arm of the pincer was to be mounted by the 21st Armoured Division from the area of Ismailia and Deversoir through Tasa to Refidim. Secondary efforts were also to be developed.
World History
