A NEW PHASE FROM MARCH ’69?no peace,’ even though formally Soviet diplomacy spared no effort to settle the con-
flict.” Nonetheless, “in Moscow, after some hesitation, no opposition was raised to
these steps. Possibly, during those months, a feeling of ‘brotherhood-in-arms’ was
generated between Russians and Eg yptians.”^40
Meanwhile, the new arrivals brought the advisers’ complement in Serkov’s division
to thirty-two, but some chronic problems remained: “there are not enough transla-
tors to go around, and transportation is insufficient.” Worse, among the fresh crop of
advisers not all were up to the level of the first contingent; several had come from
desk jobs:
One major ... previously worked for five years at a recruitment office, then spent three
filming the movie War and Peace ... we had to send him back to the USSR. Another, a
lieutenant-colonel who was appointed adviser to an artillery divizyon commander, had
served for a long time as acting commander of a city garrison. Here he had to work long
and hard to fill the gaps in his knowledge.The Egyptians too were not satisfied. In “Africa” (west of the canal) in 1973, Israeli
forces captured a copy of the highly sympathetic instructions for work with the advisers
that were issued in January 1969, with a sample report attached that is dated almost a
year later. It sums up the work of Andrey Drugatin, an adviser who began his tour in the
336th Infantry Battalion shortly after the procedure was formulated. The battalion
commander admitted there had been some benefit from Drugatin’s experience, but his
knowhow was “poor,” he evaded preparation of a training-exercise plan at the company
level, and twice declined on various pretexts to deliver lectures. “I believe that he is
[merely] a reserve officer, and I recommend not to extend his contract.”^41
Faced with this decline in the quality of new candidates, and with the original two-
year hitch of Lashchenko’s first recruits approaching its end, the chief adviser’s “Ofis” in
Cairo urged the old-timers to volunteer for one more year. But even the doughty Serkov
confided to his diary that he was beginning to feel his age, and found it “understand-
able” that few others came forward: “defying fate in the interest of defending a country
that has dubious prospects for social and political development—is this worthwhile? I
put down my replacement time as November–December ’69.” Afanas’ev, true to his
iconic image, did sign on for an extraordinary total of close to five years.^42
“Truth be told,” Serkov concluded, “these shellings are exclusively for moral-
political gain. Indeed if evaluated so, they might be quite justified ... [But] for a long
time we have been pointing out that from the military viewpoint, such shooting with
no precise targets pinpointed by intelligence and with poor fire management achieves
little purpose.”^43
D. Cross-canal raids improve
In order to obtain this intelligence data and gain combat experience, Serkov did note
a further expansion of cross-canal raids: