THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973With our support, the division increasingly activates raids by DRGs. They operate at night,
so far with little tangible outcome. For a year, they captured no one. We insist on increasing
the scale of these raids, using ‘ranger’ special-operations units in collaboration with other
forces ... Whatever effect artillery fire may have, real success can be achieved only through
proper operations by infantry formations.Here too, the advisers were actually pressing for more aggressive action than their
podsovietnye (advisees) were eager to undertake. “Resolve is lacking for more decisive
operations. The officers say they will settle for no less than guaranteed success, but in
war everything involves risk.”^44 Heikal echoes this in judging that “the main military
problem confronting Nasser ... when the War of Attrition was just beginning” was
“how to hold a bridgehead.” Eg yptian “commando patrols” had succeeded in “staying
in Sinai for up to 24 hours,” but “the Russian Military Mission was of the opinion
that [they] ought to be kept there longer.”^45
Despite the Soviets’ discontent, this was one of their greatest successes. Censored
Israeli accounts tended to disparage the scale and efficacy of the cross-canal forays.
The IDF “victory album” on the War of Attrition states that Eg yptian raids and
ambushes “although they score no success, require counteraction, safety measures and
patrols.” The album lists eight major incidents from 19 April through July, in which
“the Eg yptians made repeated attempts to capture and destroy” an Israeli strongpoint,
but never achieved it. However, unnamed Israeli officers told Korn that by December
’69, the Eg yptians were crossing the canal almost every night to lay mines. “The road
south of Deversoir was so heavily strewn with mines that the Israelis gave up trying
to dig them out and simply stopped patrolling it.” At the time, the service of con-
scripts and reservists on the canal line was euphemistically described as “the toughest
days of their lives.” Explicit accounts of increasing demoralization among IDF sol-
diers, due both to repeated attacks on patrols and prolonged bombardment and isola-
tion in the strongpoints, began to appear in the Israeli media only long after the Yom
Kippur War discredited the Bar-Lev Line concept.^46 Like the Soviets, but with better
response, the IDF had to appeal to seasoned reserve officers to volunteer for extra
stints as strongpoint commanders.
Lashchenko’s objective of taking and holding a beachhead on the east bank was
finally accomplished in December 1969. The Israelis ridiculed an Eg yptian claim that
a 250-man raid held one strongpoint for twenty-four hours, and that artillery fire
prevented Israel forces from retaking it even after the Eg yptians withdrew.^47 But Maj.
Avraham Almog, the deputy commander of an Israeli tank brigade on the canal front
from March 1969, confirmed in retrospect:
bit by bit [we] gave up points where access was difficult. ... We had a directive to enter one
of the abandoned strongpoints at the northern end of our sector. We always found a reason
not to go in there. We were afraid to have men killed or wounded. This particular strong-
point, on our side [of the canal], had an Eg yptian flag flying over it all the time.^48