FACING THE BAR-LEV LINEreturned home in January 1968, was recalled in early 1970—at age fifty-two—to
spend two years in a bunker on the canal as engineering adviser to the new formation.
In 2003, he recalled the experience with little relish. Neither of the Arab armies he
had advised was anything like his Soviet comrades in the Second World War in
respect of motivation, and the living conditions “turned my hair completely gray.”^6
In late 1968, the reorganization offered another reason—or pretext—to limit
combat operations. According to Serkov, “directly aimed cannon were used ... spar-
ingly to disrupt the [Israeli] fortification work, which compelled most of it to be done
at night.” The Eg yptian military history of the ’73 war claims that Israel’s use of air
power prevented Eg yptian artillery from fully interdicting the construction, but this
hardly applies before the summer of 1969.^7 Eg yptian officers told David Korn of the
US Embassy in Tel Aviv that they repeatedly begged Defense Minister Fawzy for
permission to use small arms against the Israeli construction crews, and he granted it
only in February. Indeed, Malashenko faulted the Eg yptians for not keeping up some
pressure on the Israelis, particularly by firing at the latter’s roads and firebases and by
seizing beachheads across the canal, which would oblige the Israelis to increase their
presence there and thus enable the Eg yptians to inflict more casualties. In retrospect,
the same result was caused by the lull in Eg yptian shelling that facilitated the con-
struction of the Bar-Lev Line, because the Israelis’ reinforced presence on the canal
bank enabled the Eg yptians’ attrition strateg y that would be explicitly declared a few
months later. But there is no indication that this was foreseen or suggested by the
advisers. They were only methodically continuing their test-and-improve program.
B. Lashchenko’s legacy and his succession
If the advisers’ progress with their trainees was unnecessarily slow and an ambivalent
hiatus did set in, it can be partly ascribed to Lashchenko’s departure in November
- There is little reason to suspect that the official explanation of “health reasons”
(a heart attack) concealed dissatisfaction on either side with his performance.
Malashenko—Lashchenko’s townsman (from Chernigov, Ukraine) and longtime
aide—does not appear to exaggerate in stating that his boss “commanded universal
respect” in Eg ypt. In his farewell meeting with Nasser, Lashchenko again presented
a candid report that included, besides the flaws already noted in the two autumn
clashes, a realistic appraisal not only of the Eg yptians’ “somewhat improved” capabil-
ity but of the Soviets’ readiness to assist them. He listed a litany of problems that
would remain sore spots for some time, such as weakness of air defense and poor
intelligence management. In respect of his centerpiece project, preparations for a
canal crossing, he still lamented that “the [Eg yptian] command and [its] forces have
not dared to take a single beachhead on the east bank.”
Still, Lashchenko recommended providing the Eg yptians with a list of new weap-
ons, some of which would indeed play pivotal roles in the coming stages: Grad-2