NOTES
pp. [75–79]^
- Klimentov, “God s tankistami vtoroy polevoy armii,” pp. 191–2. The bikinis seem at first
blush like a flight of fancy, as was definitely the case with a “bloodcurdling” legend among
the Soviets about “Israeli female commandos who landed in the rear of Eg yptian forces
and butchered hundreds of sleeping soldiers” (Viktor Moiseenkov, “Soldat iz Kazakhstana
v strane pyramid,” Karavan (Almaty), 12 April 2002). Likewise, a SAM systems special-
ist who arrived in Eg ypt in March 1971 heard stories about raiding Israeli tanks “with
half-naked women in the turrets” that put the “pious Moslem” Eg yptian soldiers to flight—
a myth that apparently developed around the only Israeli armored raid, on 9 September
1969, in which no women actually took part. Oleg Khitrov, chairman of the internation-
alist veterans’ council, Minsk, interviewed in Maksim Lobzhanets, “Voeval v peskakh
Egipta i Sirii,” Borisovskie Novosty (Belarus), 6 September 2007, http://borisovcity.net/
index.php?act=news&id=285. But Israeli accounts confirm there were female conscripts
in such functions as communications in the IDF’s front-line units well into the War of
Attrition, and they regularly visited the forward outposts. Ezra Yanuv, Ma’ariv, 18 April
1969, p. 51. Even after the artillery duels in September and October 1968, a battalion
commander used to bring one of these women with him to outposts on the canal “on calm
days,” and had her display herself to the Eg yptians—who would come out of their trenches
to ogle her and thus expose their positions. Ehud Michalson, Abirei lev: Gedud 184, Tel
Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 2003, p. 22. - Following quotations of Serkov are from Liniya fronta, pp. 38–46.
- Eli Landau, Ma’ariv, 10 September 1968, p. 3.
- Klimentov, “God s tankistami vtoroy polevoy armii,” p. 191. Sikstulis also said that sev-
eral of the Israeli soldiers were immigrants from the USSR, which explained the signs in
Russian. In 2002, Sikstulis, then a lecturer in Hebrew and later dean of the Theolog y
Faculty at the University of Latvia, Riga, declined the authors’ request for further details. - Lieblich, Seasons, pp. 23, 47, 52, 57.
- Isaenko, “Nash chelovek.”
- David Moshayov, Davar, 4 October 1968, p. 3.
- Arnold Sherman, In the Bunkers of Sinai, New York: Sabra Books, 1971, p. 22; Hebrew
version, Me’uzei Sinai, Tel Aviv: Ma’ariv, 1972, p. 18. - For example, Brig.-Gen. Dani Asher, Breaking the Concept, Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense,
2003 (has appeared in English as The Eg yptian Strateg y for the Yom Kippur War: An
Analysis, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), p. 65. - Following quotations of Malashenko are from Vspominaya, pp. 278–98. The jetty held by
Israel was across the canal from the town of Port Tawfik, the eastern part of Suez City. - Following quotations of Karpov are from “Vospominaniya,” pp. 96–8. The visit to the
canal by Dayan and Bar-Lev is confirmed by Israeli reports: Davar, 10 September 1968,
p. 1. - David Moshayov, Davar, 4 October 1968, p. 3.
- Gorbunov, “Napishi mne.”
- “Republican Decree No. 199” subordinated the Air Defense Forces directly to the min-
ister of defense. Hanan Khairy, “Air Defence Forces on Target,” Middle East Observer
(Cairo), 24 July 2015, http://www.meobserver.org/air-defence-forces-on-target/