No Mission Is Impossible (20 page)

Danny Matt's outward calm concealed tremendous tension. Never in his life had he felt such crushing responsibility. “We were carrying out a mission that could change the war's outcome. I felt that the entire nation of Israel was raising its eyes toward us,” he later said.

The boats coasted by a low stone jetty. The paratroopers crossed a sandy strip, covered with low shrubs. Danny, never departing from his cool, radioed the code word for the landing on the African bank of the canal: “Acapulco; repeat, Acapulco!”

While excited senior officers radioed congratulations to Matt, the paratroopers scouted the area. They had landed in the very middle of a fortified Egyptian compound: sand ramparts, stone and concrete walls, reinforced positions, underground bunkers. A terrible fight could have taken place here if the Egyptians had stayed and confronted the paratroopers, but they had escaped from the heavy artillery shelling. In later years historians and writers would express their amazement that the paratrooper force that had established the bridgehead was so small and vulnerable—barely 760 men.

A grove of firs, eucalyptuses and young palms stretched out behind the compound. Small units of paratroopers took position on top of the ramparts.

Arik Achmon, one of Matt's two deputies, stopped by to see a friend. “To be in the first half-track that entered the Old City of Jerusalem,” he cracked, smiling, “and in one of the first boats to cross into Africa—that's quite something in a man's life, isn't it?”

Thundering explosions were heard from the eastern bank of the canal. The paratroopers didn't know that a formidable battle was raging between Reshef's armored brigade and large Egyptian forces. The fighting took place around the Tirtur (“Rattle”) route that ran parallel to the Spider road that Matt's men had used to reach the canal. The fierce combat spread to the “Chinese Farm.” It also delayed the crossing of the canal by large Israeli forces, because the Cylinder Bridge, a prefabricated Israeli invention, dragged by eighteen tanks, wouldn't reach the Canal before October 17.

But Sharon wouldn't give up. Two huge bulldozers arrived at the canal and breached a passage for heavy vehicles. The breaching site (the “Yard”) had been prepared by Sharon long before, when he still was commander of the Southern District. He had used red bricks to
mark the thinner ramparts, which could be easily breached. Now he dispatched to the breach several pontoons that should together form a floating bridge. But as some of the pontoons lagged behind, the engineers brought over the “Crocodiles,” monstrous amphibious tank carriers that had been invented by a French officer and named Gillois after him; a while before, the Israeli defense ministry had bought the old Gillois from the NATO surplus stocks and refurbished them—and as dawn broke on October 16, the Crocodiles started carrying the first tanks of Hayim Erez's armored brigade across the canal.

The Yard and the bridgehead across the waterway bustled with activity. The Egyptians did not realize that an Israeli task force had landed behind their backs. It took more than two days for the Egyptian high command to find out that Israeli units had taken positions on the canal's western bank. On October 16, Egypt's President Sadat made a speech before a special session of the parliament and announced that he had ordered work to start on the Suez Canal, blocked since the Six Day War, in order to reopen it to international shipping. That same afternoon he was surprised to hear the statement of Golda Meir before the Knesset that IDF units were operating on the western bank of the canal. But even then, the Egyptians assumed that this was a limited raid of a commando unit in their territory.

During the heavy fighting against the Egyptians on the eastern bank some of the members of Sharon's advanced command unit were hurt; Sharon himself was lightly scratched, and the white dressing on his forehead became, for the soldiers, the symbol of the canal crossing. From his position in the Yard, Sharon tried to convince his superiors to allow his division to cross the canal and exploit their initial success. He pointed out that Hayim Erez had crossed with twenty-seven tanks on the Crocodiles and had darted westward; Erez had destroyed several bases of ground-to-air missiles and cleared the skies for the Israeli fighter planes. But there was more: Erez almost didn't meet any resistance, and he had the feeling that the road to Cairo was opened before him. He radioed Sharon, “I can get to the Nile!”

Shortly before the crossing of the Suez Canal, a meeting of senior IDF commanders in Sinai. From left to right: General Ariel Sharon, Division commander; General Moshe Dayan, Minister of Defense; Colonel Braun. General Adan; one of the authors of this book, Sergeant Michael Bar-Zohar; General Tal; General Tamir; General Gonen. (
Uri Dan)

But Sharon's superiors firmly refused to let Sharon cross. First, they demanded that he lay another bridge over the water and open the roads leading to the canal. They feared an Egyptian move to block the road to the canal and to annihilate the paratrooper bridgehead, as long as the roads were not secured and the bridges not in place. They also ordered Sharon to stay in the Yard and let Adan's Division 162 cross the canal in order to encircle the Third Army. Sharon's repeated pleas to let him cross were to no avail. Some commentators insisted that Sharon had been stopped for political reasons.

But in the meantime the Egyptians understood that an Israeli task force had crossed Suez and established a base on the African side. Now a new chapter in the fighting started: desperate efforts by the Egyptian Army to annihilate the bridgehead. From the second day after the crossing and up to the cease-fire, nine days later, Matt's paratroopers in Africa and Sharon's other units in the Yard were submitted to nonstop heavy bombardment that caused large numbers of casualties. The Egyptians attacked
Sharon's fighters with artillery and mortars, their jets dived on them with bombs and missiles, their helicopters dropped napalm barrels or fired at them day and night, in the light of parachuted flares. But the crossing continued; the pontoon bridge was completed, the Cylinder Bridge finally reached the canal and was laid between its two banks. Matt's paratroopers watched, from the top of the ramparts, the never-ending convoys that crossed the bridges on their way to the African side. Arik Sharon enjoyed the enthusiastic admiration of the troops, and when he crossed the canal he was received by shouts of “Arik, King of Israel.”

On October 24 the fire ceased. The Third Army was surrounded; Matt's paratroopers had occupied the fertile agricultural strip along the canal and advanced northward to Ismailia, a large Egyptian town; the paratroopers also had advanced south, to the city of Suez; the Israeli armor had stopped at the “101st kilometer,” sixty-three miles from Cairo.

Time had come for Israel and Egypt to lay down their weapons and start talking. The talks, held at the 101st kilometer, would result in a separation of forces; five years later the two countries would sign the Camp David Accords, and the following year, a peace treaty.

   
MOSHE (“BOGIE”) YA'ALON, LATER CHIEF OF STAFF AND DEFENSE MINISTER

          
“The Yom Kippur War is part of my DNA.

              
“The announcement of war hit me like thunder on a clear day. I was a civilian, a reserve sergeant, a newlywed. The commanders of the Fiftieth Airborne Battalion had wanted to send me to an officers' course, but I didn't want to sign on for permanent service, and I was discharged. On Rosh Hashanah [the Jewish New Year] eve, I was elected secretary of Kibbutz Grofit in the Negev.

              
“When I was told about the outbreak of the war, on October sixth at two
P.M
., I thought they were pulling my leg, but in the evening I was already at the Sirkin base with my comrades from the 247th Paratrooper Brigade. On October sixteenth, we crossed the canal on the floating bridge. We took shelling,
secured the bridgehead and ended the war in the city of Suez. You find yourself at war, planes attacking, shellings, bombings, clashes . . . I thought that I wasn't going to survive all this.

              
“But, ironically, it was at war that I had time to think. Bad news arrived about the fall of the forts along the canal, about friends who had been killed or wounded. A sense of distrust in the political and military leadership grew in me. I felt powerless. Perhaps the country is going to fall! Where is the leadership? Where is the intelligence? Where are all the people we're supposed to trust?

              
“I told myself, if I come out of this war alive, the kibbutz will get along fine without me. I'm staying in the army, returning to permanent service as a platoon commander. I can't be at peace with myself if I go back to the kibbutz. My priorities must change.

              
“At the end of the war, I went looking for the Fiftieth Battalion. They were deployed at the Gidi Pass, in Sinai. Ya Ya [Colonel Yuval Yair] was the battalion commander. I told him, ‘Ya Ya, I'm coming back to the army.'”

While the paratroopers are crossing the Suez Canal, a fierce battle is taking place at the “Chinese Farm,” bordering with the roads leading to the canal. Disappointed with the commander of the Southern District's performance, Golda appoints former chief of staff Haim Bar-Lev as commander of the Southern Front.

I
f the Chinese Farm could speak, it would recount the two consecutive nights of bloody battle that took place on its soil in the fall of 1973, recalling the dead, the injured, the moments of despair and the acts of heroism it left recorded in the history of the IDF and the Egyptian Army.

In the mid-fifties, a strip of land covering 5.8 square miles located on the Sinai Peninsula had been converted into an agricultural compound with the help of the Japanese government. Close to the Suez Canal, it had been crisscrossed with deep ditches dug for irrigation.
The Israeli soldiers who reached it during the Six Day War in 1967 couldn't tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese characters, and had nicknamed it the “Chinese Farm.”

The Chinese Farm was located north of the Great Bitter Lake. It was close to both the Spider and the Rattle routes to the canal, and to the important junction between Rattle and Lexicon—code name for a road that ran parallel to the canal. Israel's plan was to occupy the farm, so that the “corridor” to the canal remained free; that would ensure the success of the crossing (see chapter 15). In many aspects, the conquest of the Chinese Farm would be critical to the survival of the bravehearts' bridgehead.

Arik Sharon, who had been tasked with capturing the Chinese Farm and crossing the canal, said on the mission's eve, “We should not expect any surprises. There's not a living soul there [in the Chinese Farm]. Our force would move without shooting, without [doing] anything, and would enter the area. This entire territory is empty.” But the reality turned out to be entirely different. Waiting for the Israelis was a big surprise—bigger than they could have imagined.

On the night of October 15, the 14th Armored Brigade, led by Colonel Amnon Reshef, moved toward the Suez Canal; its goal was to occupy the east bank of the canal, north of the two roads, and thus protect the paratroopers' crossing. Amnon Reshef was a tall, skinny guy sporting a huge mustache; tanks had always been his natural habitat. The Haifa-born officer had distinguished himself during the Six Day War, where he had fought in the Sinai and on the Golan Heights. His brigade, the only tank brigade that faced the Egyptian Army when it attacked Israel on the first day of the Yom Kippur War, had been badly mauled. After the first day of fighting Reshef had only 14 of his 56 tanks left; 90 of his soldiers had been killed.

Reshef had recovered quickly, received fresh reinforcements, reorganized his brigade, participated in a victorious battle against Egyptian armor the previous day, and that night he led his men into battle, hoping to surprise the enemy. Riding on tanks and half- tracks, the armored
and infantry forces advanced without knowing what the Egyptians had in store for them. But Lieutenant Colonel Amram Mitzna, leading Battalion 79, had a bad premonition. Before the battle he wrote a farewell letter to his wife and left it with his jeep driver.

At nine-fifteen that evening, Mitzna's spearhead battalion arrived in the area where it was supposed to secure the route for crossing the Suez. But it quickly ran into Egyptian tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery. Punishing battles unfolded, sometimes within a range of just a few feet. Mitzna later recalled, “The first encounter was on Rattle road. Suddenly hellfire came at us from all sides. There was hysteria all along the communication network. The brigade's order was to shoot anything that moved. Tanks were crashing into tanks. The 184th Tank Battalion was firing at the 79th . . .”

The Israeli battalion destroyed numerous Egyptian targets but also paid a heavy price in its own blood. A shell that struck Mitzna's tank killed the operations officer and gunner, and Mitzna was thrown from the vehicle and badly wounded.

The 184th Battalion, trailing Mitzna, began to take heavy fire, causing severe losses. Barely half of its tanks managed to cross the Lexicon–Rattle junction. The battle spilled over to the neighboring Chinese Farm, where the Egyptians had entrenched themselves with crack troops, tanks and every possible kind of weapon, including the anti-tank Sagger missile freshly arrived from the Soviet Union. The Sagger was an individual guided missile, carried in a small suitcase by a soldier. The Israelis later nicknamed the suitcase carriers “tourists.” But these tourists were deadly. When an Israeli tank was in sight, the tourist would open his suitcase, produce his missile and guide it by remote control until it blew up the tank. That weapon destroyed scores of Israeli tanks in the terrible battle than engulfed the entire Chinese Farm.

Bloody battle at the Chinese Farm.
(GPO)

Very soon, the area looked less like a farm and more like a killing field. “We felt like we were ramming a steel wall,”recalled one of the officers. “Every time we went in with tanks, Egyptian soldiers would pop out of the ditches and shoot at us with missiles. We fired back at them with machine guns and tank cannons. We cut them down, killing them by the dozen, and more always appeared in their place to strike at us. With each charge, we lost people and tanks.”

Amnon Reshef fought beside his soldiers, taking hits from enemy shrapnel and shells; in a close encounter with the Egyptians his battered tank shot four out of five enemy tanks, and the fifth escaped. Reshef reported this incident on his radio, not in order to brag, but to reassure his men that their colonel was fighting beside them.

On a large area, tanks were burning and exploding. The desert battlefield was soon covered with charred and gutted vehicles by the hundreds. The carcasses of Israeli and Egyptian tanks lay beside each other. Dead and wounded lay on the sand, their uniforms crumpled and torn, their faces covered with soot from the firing; it was impossible to distinguish between the dead Egyptians and Israelis. One tank gunner tried to find Israeli wounded soldiers in an original way. He moved between the
wounded, asking each one in Hebrew, “Are you a Jew?” In the middle of this living hell, surrounded by gunfire, explosions and death rattles, one of the wounded proved he had lost a lot of blood but had kept his sense of humor. Yiftah Yaakov of kibbutz Manara, a nephew of Yitzhak Rabin, blurted, “Yes, but it's hard to be a Jew in the Land of Israel. . . .”

At this stage, Colonel Reshef realized that the battalion's objective wouldn't be achievable because of the Egyptians' forceful resistance, the Israelis' heavy losses and the urgent need to reorganize the brigade, which had come apart during the fighting. “Around us,” he recalled, “weapons stockpiles, hundreds of trucks, and artillery batteries abandoned by the Egyptians were blowing up. The Egyptian infantry ran among our tanks, hitting them with bazookas. Every so often, four or five Egyptian tanks would initiate assaults from a range of between six hundred fifty to just a couple feet.”

At 4:00
A.M
., Reshef launched a force of paratroopers and tanks into action to clear out the junction. Murderous fire suddenly burst out, and the soldiers were caught in a firetrap. The paratroopers attempted to get away, but the Egyptians gave chase, shooting at them from close range. One of the units lost most of its soldiers—twenty-four men—in an attempt to open Rattle road from west to east. The attempt to reopen Rattle failed, but most of the Egyptian tanks that participated in that battle were hit.

That night, as Danny Matt's paratroopers crossed the canal not far away, the battle for the Chinese Farm claimed the lives of 121 of Reshef's fighters; evacuating the wounded under fire lasted until the early hours of the morning. Out of Reshef's ninety-seven tanks, fifty-six had been destroyed. The Egyptians had succeeded in blocking both Rattle and Spider. The IDF's major problem remained opening the blocked routes to bring over the pontoon bridges and enabling the flow of Israeli troops to the other side of Suez. At a certain moment, Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan, shocked by the losses and the failure to reopen the roads to the canal, wanted to bring back Matt's paratroopers, lest they be slaughtered at the bridgehead. The idea was rejected by the IDF superior officers.

It was evident that new forces would be needed to reopen the roads, and the fighters of the 35th Paratroop Brigade were chosen. The 890th
Paratroop Battalion, led by Lieutenant Colonel Itzhak Mordechai, was assigned the task.

On October 16, the 890th was in Abu Rudeis, in southwestern Sinai, preparing to land by sea behind the Egyptian forces. Suddenly, Mordechai received an urgent call from Brigade Commander Uzi Yairi, who announced a change of assignment: the landing had been called off, and the battalion would be dispatched to the crossing zone in order to reinforce the units going across the canal. “The roads are blocked,” Yairi said. “Not a single tank has managed to get past the Spider road. The IDF is waiting for it to be opened.”

Mordechai, who was smart and confident, had been born in Kurdistan and immigrated to Israel at the age of five. After growing up in a moshav, he had joined the army and participated in many a perilous commando mission deep in Egyptian and Syrian territory. A born fighter, he had been deeply impressed by a former paratroop commander, now a general, Raful Eitan. Idling in Abu Rudeis was not to his liking; he was excited and invigorated when he got Uzi Yairi's call.

The soldiers of the 890th, as well, were excited by the news. They had been waiting for the moment when they would join the fighting, following ten days of standing by. A few hours later they were flown by Hercules aircraft from Abu Rudeis to Refidim, a large IAF base in western Sinai; buses waiting for them headed for Camp Tassa, where Sharon's advanced headquarters were located. The routes were blocked, and the battalion had to force its way through; only that evening did it reach camp. All the while, its assignment remained insufficiently clear. Mordechai was told, “The Rattle and Spider roads are blocked off—there's no way to evacuate the injured, no way to reinforce the troops. Your assignment is to clear out the roads of Egyptian anti-tank detachments.”

Mordechai responded, “And what about artillery?'

Yairi told him, “It will take an hour to bring in an artillery-coordination officer, and we're squeezed for time.”

This was the reason the paratroopers set out for battle without an artillery-coordination officer—and only in battle would it become clear how damaging his absence would be. Nor did the commanders receive
up-to-date intelligence about the array of Egyptian forces on the Chinese Farm, which the previous night had conducted a lethal battle against Sharon's troops. The paratroopers' assignment was to clear out the roads and to prevent the Egyptians from penetrating the “corridor” and hitting Israeli troops. But the situation on the ground was completely different.

The 890th was flown by helicopter from Camp Tassa toward the Spider road. During a briefing in General Avraham Adan's tent, Yairi and Mordechai received their instructions: troops from the battalion would fan out immediately and clear the roads. The request for tanks and armored personnel carriers was rejected, as the division commander preferred a quiet night attack without tank noise. Anyway, he said, the tanks' efficiency was limited at night. Chief of Staff David Elazar, and the front commander, Haim Bar-Lev, pressured Yairi to launch the battalion immediately. “If the routes aren't open by morning,” they said, “the force that has already crossed the canal will be in danger, and we'll need to bring them back.” Mordechai felt that a tremendous responsibility had been put on his shoulders.

At midnight, the 890th moved in two columns from a point along the Spider road toward Rattle junction. At first, their advance was rapid and easy. But soon, they noticed the twisted and charred remains of the previous night's battle. Along the way, the soldiers passed a half-track full of dead bodies. The brigade's deputy commander, Lieutenant Colonel Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, recounted, “I was sure that these were the bodies of Egyptian soldiers, but, as I got closer, I could see that they were Israeli paratroopers. For me this was an inner earthquake, the first time I realized that there could be a situation in which Israeli soldiers could be laying, one corpse next to another, no one removing them.”

At 2:45 in the morning, Yaki Levy, the commander of Company B, which moved at the head of the battalion, reported to Mordechai that he had engaged the enemy. A burst of heavy gunfire had hit the center of the group, “and suddenly everyone was writhing on the ground,” remembered a medic. A few minutes later Levy was killed. His deputy, Jackie Hakim, took control and after a few minutes was also hit. The command then passed to the other deputy, Ben-Zion Atzmon.