IN THE THICK OF THE YOM KIPPUR WARdown my notebook. During the brief moments of rest, the poems and sketches just
begged to be put on paper.”^10
Kutsenko’s timeline clarifies that “Bodrov’s” dispatch to Eg ypt was on 4 October,
on board an Il-18 airliner—that is, one of the six planes that were spotted landing in
Cairo. He was among “60 officers of the Moscow military district” who were “rousted
out at 6 am. By 8 they were at Chkalovsky military airport and by 8 pm had already
reached a briefing room in Cairo.” Their operational action began the next day—
5 October. Given the time difference between Cairo and Moscow, the Politburo
decision to select and send such a group had to be made before Sadat’s supposed
tipoff, even if it was delivered on the 3rd.^11 The mission entrusted to Kutsenko’s alter
ego is of special significance: “Bodrov” was to replace the chief engineering adviser to
one of the Eg yptian army corps, who had suddenly fallen sick. Advisers who were
already attached to Eg yptian formations might perhaps have been caught up willy-
nilly in the operation—but if Moscow had disapproved of it, a substitute would
hardly have been posted so urgently for a key adviser, whatever the reason for his
absence, or sent specifically for the canal-crossing assignment.
What follows is a detailed account of the Soviet engineer’s role in the crossing.
Much of it conforms to descriptions of the Eg yptian operation that Kutsenko
might theoretically have gleaned from literature about the war or from his own
professional knowhow—for example, the model (Moskva) of the outboard motors
on the inflatable dinghies that were used for the initial infantry assault. The claim
that pontoon bridges for armored vehicles were constructed within thirty-five
minutes is actually modest compared with Israeli estimates.^12 Attributing the use of
high-pressure water jets rather than explosive charges to breach the Israeli earth-
work to a last-minute suggestion from Bodrov appears inflated too, especially since
Soviet-made water cannon were already supplied in January 1973 and their use in
the war was widely described.^13 But Kutsenko’s known figure and reputation bolster
his own hedged claim of authenticity and warrant further inquiry in those cases
where the substance is new.
One such case is the otherwise uncorroborated claim that “Bodrov” comman-
deered civilian fire engines and floated them on makeshift ferries built of two pon-
toons each: the Israeli side just described these as “water-jet barges,” so the fire-
engine version is not entirely implausible.^14 His charge that the army corps
commander and his Soviet adviser, “Gen. Trofimov,” abandoned “Bodrov” and his
advisee, “Col. Yahya,” and they had to flee their headquarters south of Ismailia
under heavy Israeli fire that killed “Yahya,” fits in with the record of the Israeli
crossing, which took place south of the city and reached its outskirts. On the other
hand, decades of controversy and research on this hallowed chapter of IDF annals
have not confirmed that Israeli tanks drove across “Bodrov’s” bridges, after his
repeated calls to dismantle them went unheeded.