As we got closer, I could still see no sign of them. As dawn was about break, I radioed Yitzhik to suggest he fire off a flare, but he thought that would put them at even greater mercy of the Egyptians. Instead, he tossed out a smoke grenade. We spotted it, more than a half-a-mile away, slightly below us and to our right. I ordered us forward, leaving my second tank company behind for covering fire. I led Company A, which included my most experienced tank commander, Moshe Sukenik. Immediately behind us were our APCs, including two carrying our medical team. My aim was to engage the Egyptian fire while starting to evacuate Yitzhik’s men to one of the long, dry, irrigation ditches, 600 yards behind us.
We moved forward in a broad line with my command tank in the center. We held our fire until we got closer. I still couldn’t see exactly where the men of Battalion 890 were and didn’t want to risk hitting them. Only when we got within about 70 yards did I spot the first of the paratroopers. They were in groups of three or four in a thin line stretching 200 or 300 yards on either side of us. They were lying behind whatever cover they could find: a bush, a clump of debris, a small rise in the sand. Some were firing. Others were wounded. From just a few yards away, Egyptian infantrymen were raking them with rifle and machine-gun fire. They were now shooting at us as well, and we returned fire. But the Egyptians, far outnumbering Yitzhik’s men, were spread out in a network of foxholes, in some places connected by trenches. As we moved forward, I ordered my APC commander to start evacuating the paratroopers back to the irrigation ditch, with the support of a further group of courageous reservists from another nearby APC unit.
A shell suddenly exploded 20 yards ahead of me. Others rained in around our tanks. The source of the fire was straight ahead, about 1,300 yards away: three SU-100s, Soviet-made World War Two “tank destroyers”. I trained the main gun of my tank on one of the SU-100s and ordered the gunner to fire. I used the battalion-wide radio frequency so the others would hear the order. But when the dust and smoke had cleared, the SU-100s were still there. I ordered a sight correction and said, again: “Fire”. Still, we missed. It was only then that I realized why. Almost none of the tanks brought brought into Julis from the maintenance units had included their “commander’s notebook” with their checklists for calibrating and firing — a major problem, since many of the reservists had last been in a tank years before. I ordered the gunners to use their telescopes, parallel to the main gun, instead.
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