Sinai Victory

by S.L.A. Marshall

book

Genres: History, Military Fiction

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

S.L.A. Marshall (full name, Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall) served in World War I and then embarked in a career in journalism. In World War II, he was chief combat historian in the Central Pacific (1943) and chief historian for the European Theater of Operations (1945). He authored some 30 books about warfare, including Pork Chop Hill: The American Fighting Man in Action, The River and the Gauntlet and Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

SLA Marshall published this account of the 1956 war between Egypt and Israel, France and the UK just 18 months after the end of the conflict. This is the Israeli story and it’s fair to say Marshall is impressed. Maybe a little too much. But the Israeli performance is pretty impressive in just 100 hours. This book deals with the tactical level, spending time first with Ariel Sharon’s brigade in the center, then the push in the north to include Gaza. Finally, we get the account of the capture of Sharm el Sheikh. He also gives a little bit of the Egyptian effort and notes some hard fights that slow or stop the Israeli attack. This is strictly an account of the Israeli active/reservist system and the imaginative fighting styles employed in the most difficult terrain. An enjoyable history. 4 Stars
Strength overcame disorganization because Israel’s Army fights that way. When the attack becomes disjointed, when radios are muted by fire and lower commands are out of touch with the steadying hand higher up, Israel’s soldiers nearest the enemy invariably follow their standard procedure. They close upon the defender’s works. That is the main lesson from the battle story. The phenomenal mobility of Israel’s Army isn’t generated out of machine power but out of the unanimous acceptance and application of a fighting doctrine which of its essence becomes unifying in the hour of greatest danger. Gideon’s band may have held to the same simple rules. There is not one new idea in the doctrine. The startling tactical pace of the Army comes of applying sedulously those methods and precepts which all armies tell their infantry and armor will best maintain unity in battle. The difference is that Israel’s soldiers hear and believe. It’s a short list.

-Leading means moving to the point of main danger if decisive pressure is to be maintained. There is no excuse for holding back,

-When orders can’t get through, assume what the orders would be

-When in doubt, hit out. The short route to safety is the road to the enemy hill.

-Don’t attack head-on; there is usually a better way.

-If you must go in head-on, don’t present a broad target.

-When troops are truly exhausted, hold back and rest them.

-Waste no energy in useless movement. Maintain the pace of the attack so long as physical resources seem sufficient.

-If the force designated to attack is not suitably armed to overrun the position, pull off and call for what is needed. Avoid useless wastage.

-Don't delay the battle because of supply shortages which lie beyond its probable crisis.

-Keep your sense of humor if you would save your wits.

-When trapped by sudden fire, movement means salvation more surely than a foxhole.

-Always try for surprise in one form or another.

-When local surprise is possible, don’t expose movement with premature fires.

-In the attack, risk, risk, risk.

The first attack to secure the Mitla Pass:
Ariel Sharon led the first attack into the Sinai. His paratroopers dropped on the Mitla Pass and also the ground effort to reach his dropped troops. The "short list" above basically describes his first two days.
Still, he (Ariel Sharon) felt fairly good, though he hadn’t closed his eyes in seventy hours. Maybe that was because he had been up front in the column where the dust, and consequently the fatigue, are less.

At 2300 hours, after getting a full account from the local commander, he called a conference of all commanders to issue orders for the reorganization of the expanded camp and for the movement to capture Mitla Pass.

He intended to tell the others that the brigade would again carry on, starting at o400 hours. That would put the advance guard at the entrance to the pass, ready to engage, when first light broke. He reckoned that five hours’ sleep would be more than enough to freshen the men in these circumstances.

But he couldn’t get the words out. As he opened his mouth to speak, he looked at his officers who sat facing him in a semicircle. Every one of them was sound asleep. The sight narcotized him. His tongue thickened, the sounds choked in his throat, he fell flat and was almost instantly asleep.

Nature had taken over because Sharon, an acute judge of the physical powers of other men, had for once pushed himself beyond sensible limits. Many a general has been stripped of his battle command for making the same error. In Sharon’s case, it wasn’t fatal.

He slept for four hours and fifteen minutes. It might have been longer had not an air drop come in over the camp and landed one 600-pound bundle within three feet of Sharon’s head. That wakened him and reconvened the conference.

The nighttime drop fell directly on the bivouac area, fortunately without hitting a man, though there were many near misses.

The final assault on Sharm el Sheikh:
At noontime on Sunday Yoffe’s advance guard broke through the outguard line at Sharm-E]l-Sheikh and in a brisk action opened the way to the main defenses. Fighting operations were then suspended, and Yoffe waited for the rest of the column to close on the camp. For all hands there was approximately a twelve-hour pause before anything else was done. The day was fair and the breeze from the sea was refreshing.

The maneuver out of which cane the knockout blow had taken about five hours from the jump-off until the last shot was fired. The Egyptian main body was entrenched along a ridge crest running parallel to the coast with its right flank next to the sea. Though Israel’s Air Force had strafed Sharm. El-Sheikh for two days, it had not damaged this position.

At 0400 hours six Israeli companies loaded into half-tracks which formed in line and started up the ridge. While the dark still held, they closed to within 150 yards of the defenders, At dawn several Israeli jets napalmed the trench line and the infantry then rushed it.

There was confused fighting in the trenches until three hours after sunrise when Lieut. Col. Khana Neguib at last surrendered his garrison. He had lost approximately two hundred men killed and as many wounded. He yielded more than one thousand able-bodied men who had been subdued in the direct assault by half their number. The brigade’s losses were ten men killed and thirty-three wounded.

One of Yoffe’s officers sought the senior Egyptian present, a full colonel who commanded the area. He was found at his bunker, dressed as for a parade. His bags were already packed and loaded onto a jeep, as was his batman. He had spent the battle hour preparing for his ride into captivity.

[Don Heiman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall specialized in military histories of WW 1 & 2 as well as the Korean War. His research about the 100 hour 1956 Israel Sinai Peninsula war is outstanding and provides an important understanding of military strategy and tactics. I especially enjoyed his summary of Israeli Army training and service requirements. The writing is engaging and places the reader in the action.

[Liam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Worth reading; however not a particularly enjoyable, or even enlightening, book to read. I would not hesitate to recommend reading Moshe Dayan's Diary of the Sinai Campaign either before or instead of this work. Much of the actual information is the same, and, somewhat surprisingly, as it was not originally written in English, the late General Dayan's book simply flows better. S.L.A. Marshall was, ultimately, very much a man of his time, and he wrote in a particular style which was tailored for a readership that, for the most part, no longer exists...

[Dave Beeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise history of the 1956 Sinai campaign of the Israeli Army as the faced a numerical superior Egyptian army. The Egyptians had the advantage of of being in well prepared defensive positions with superior numbers of tanks, anti-tank (AT) weapons and aircraft. What they did not have was the will and fighting spirit of the Israeli citizen-soldier who proceeded to drive the Egyptian forces out of the Sinai causing a huge lose of military supplies and equipment while inflicting personnel loses in the form of KIA's, WIA's, missing and POW's.

[KennyO · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the early 1950s Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser closed the Suez Canal and the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping. In late October 1956, with the goal of reopening both, the Israeli army crossed from Israel into the Sinai.

Published in 1958, just two years after the 1956 Suez War, S.L.A. Marshall's Sinai Victory is the story of the Sinai campaign as studied on the Israeli side. Marshall wrote this book is solely about the military action of the Israeli army in that campaign. He omits political discussion and makes scant mention of the actions of France and Great Britain, both of whom took part. The crux of the book is a chronology of the 1956 Suez War from the Israeli army's view, fleshed out with a thorough explanation of its military philosophy. This is a military history that succeeds in holding a narrow focus on the how, not on the why of the campaign. Analysis is broad but not particularly in-depth, leaving the reader to assay it himself.

Marshall's blow by blow writing is thorough and somewhat more graceful than a report but it's less than riveting unless you enjoy the military history genre. The many illustrations are quite good but seem to me a mite fragmented. I often had the feeling that the microscope's magnification should've been backed off by half an order of magnitude. It's the kind of book that begs for a foldout map. The book's greatest weakness, though, is its lack of bibliography and footnotes/endnotes. There must have been a presumption that the reader has all that kind of information in hand. Still, I feel like I have a much better understanding of that milestone in near* east history.

*In my school days in the 1950s and 1960s this region was the near east with the middle east considerably further east, say, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India. It probably became the mid-east when some TV reporter with a weak understanding of geography but with a huge audience began mistakenly calling it that.