THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973not a year or two, but a generation. A Russian expert, who comes for a few years, ...
cannot change an Eg yptian’s character and mentality.” When Mohamed Hassanein
Heikal crowed that now “we will have to cross to the other side where the enemy is
dug in, to fight him there and to enjoy the advantage of offensive,” Israeli officials
warned Nasser that “this would of course be a fatal error, as this time too they will be
dealt a severe defeat by the IDF.”^22 Such arrogance hardly led the IDF to promptly
draw the lessons from its sobering unpreparedness on 8 September, and the results of
this failure would become evident in a matter of weeks.
The Soviet advisers, too, readily admitted—indeed, warned—that despite the
Eg yptians’ marked progress in artillery fire and small-scale raids, they were still unfit
for the ultimate offensive. Lashchenko’s training plan called for conducting staff
exercises of large formations, and the first had been held in the II Army Corps—
which then held the entire canal front—in the summer of 1968. Malashenko pre-
pared the blueprint and presented it to Fawzy, but had to tone down the war minis-
ter’s enthusiasm that “this is almost the plan for the reconquest of Sinai!” Yes,
Malashenko confirmed, but the exercise merely comprised a single army corps; “the
navy and air force are included only schematically.” Even so, and although “the exer-
cise was more like a game on the map,” as actual forces on the ground were not
involved, the simulation’s purposes of “advancing a field army with the crossing of a
water obstacle, establishing a beachhead, repelling a counterattack, and further
advance ...” was a complex matter, and doubly so for the Eg yptian officers because
they had never studied it or dealt with it before.
The interpreter Gorbunov listed a typical Soviet adviser’s tasks in June 1968: “he
guides the Eg yptian units in the field about the practical construction of pontoon
bridges, until they reach adequate proficiency for crossing the Suez Canal in the event
of hostilities.”^23 The staff exercise, however, showed that such proficiency was still far
from achieved. The participants were entirely unable to progress from generalizations
to practical execution:
The timetables they drew up for ferrying forces across the canal had not taken into consid-
eration the capacity of fording equipment, and had to be revised. Provisions had not been
made to surmount the concrete wall of the canal and the rampart behind it. ... The gather-
ing of situation reports was conducted slowly and only over the telephone ... due to unpre-
paredness of the signalmen and officers, and also for fear of using the radio. The Eg yptian
generals and officers worked willingly in daytime, but as soon as night fell their working
capacity diminished. ... Contrary to the preset rules for the exercise, at night only a duty
shift remained and all the others went to rest.“Before the exercise began,” Malashenko recalled, “Lashchenko told me that if I
could get the army corps’ headquarters to work and relocate at night, he would rec-
ommend me for a decoration. [But for] lack of communications, the army corps’
headquarters failed to relocate, so there was no reason to recommend me.” Lower