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From JPost Archives on Yom Kippur War | MORE ARTICLES

Sharon tells how he crossed the Canal

WASHINGTON — Major General Ariel (Arik) Sharon, in a further installment of a "New York Times" interview yesterday, detailed how he made advance preparations for the Suez Canal crossing by weakening the earthen bank running along the waterway at a crucial road junction.

At the crossing point just north of the Great Bitter Lake, the general had the high earthen bank weakened at one point and ordered the spot marked by red bricks, "The Times" related.

The newspaper quoted him as saying that he did this during his 4 years as Southern Area commander, when he realized ’that it might be necessary someday to make a canal crossing.’

When Aluf Sharon outlined his plan for the Canal crossing on October 15, "The Times" said, an engineering officer said he could not quickly breach the banks with the bulldozers and other equipment available.

"I told him to look for the red bricks, and when the time came he found them I the dark and did it," the general was quoted as saying.

Sharon said the Canal crossing operation was so complicated, "It made operations like taking the Egyptian strongpoint of Abu Agelia in 1967 seem simple."

The main problem, he said was to reach the water and establish the bridgehead in the same night. The tactics involved sending one armored brigade north of the Tasa-Great Bitter Lake road in a deceptive move while the main force swept past sand dunes along the lake to the bridgehead.

The key battle, he said, was a staggeringly violent fight to protect the bridgehead corridor from Egyptian counterattacks on the eastern bank. "The Times" reporter who conducted the interview said a visit to the now quiet battlefield on the eastern bank showed 24 totally burned out Israeli Patton tanks within a short stretch of a few thousand yards, with about 100 knocked out Egyptian tanks in the same area.

 

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