“WE WILL BE TWO ISMAILS”Eilts arrived in Eg ypt only after the war, to take charge of the US interests section
and reconstitute it as an embassy. He did not clarify whether the section had learned
of Grechko’s visit and supposed remarks in real time or only in retrospect. Either way,
Eilts’s comment that “nobody has mentioned” the visit still holds true to the best of
our knowledge too—with one exception.
This is Grechko’s senior adjutant, Viktor Minin, who in his memoir describes a
reception thrown by Sadat for Grechko in a marquee at the pyramids “in 1973, when
Eg ypt was fighting Israel,” a frame narrowed down by Eilts’s statement; no other visit
by the defense minister in 1973 has been recorded. Minin recalls that the lights sud-
denly went out, and he covered his boss with his body—no small feat, given Grechko’s
height—“in case of an Israeli attack.”^65 At the conference where Eilts referred to it,
none of the Eg yptian or Soviet participants is recorded as challenging his statement.
Given the disclosure of the Alexandria council, within the same time frame and at
Grechko’s level of defense ministers, his presence would strongly corroborate Soviet
complicity in the Eg yptian–Syrian offensive.
An uncommon veteran’s testimony from Syria illustrates the Soviets’ participation
in preparing the offensive. Senior Sgt Mikhail Mikhailovich, who was serving in a
Grad rocket-launcher unit in Hungary, relates his mission:
in the summer of 1973, 33 men of our battalion were summoned to the ‘Lenin Room’ and
issued an order: we were being urgently transferred for implementation of a responsible
mission. But where and what for they didn’t say. ... Under the command of five officers, for
a total of 38 men ... the convoy comprised two APCs and six Grad systems.They went through Yugoslavia to a Bulgarian port, where they were awaited by
what Mikhailovich describes as “a desant [landing ] ship designed to appear as a
merchant-marine freighter.” The men were dressed in “Arab” uniforms with flak jack-
ets. Though they were not allowed to go on deck, conditions in the hold were “luxuri-
ous” and the chow included delicacies that
we never saw in civilian life. Only on shore did it become clear that we were in Syria and
would have to fight a bit. There were hostilities between Syria and Israel, and we had to give
military support to the Syrians, but clandestinely. ... As I understood, our outfit was to land
an unexpected lightning blow on concentrations of military equipment, and just as quickly
and covertly to disappear.Four Grad salvos were fired, from rapidly changed positions. They were not told of
the results, but as the crews with the best training scores had been selected, they were
certain that they hit the targets. They were evacuated by the same ship the next day.^66
As Israel reported no such rocketing on the Syrian or Eg yptian front before the
surprise offensive on 6 October, unless Mikhailovich misdated the event (which
seems unlikely as other details in his account place it around July–August), his mis-
sion was a demonstration in preparation for the war. According to the Syrian docu-