____________________________________________ 4 IICC Perspectives From the northernmost post I saw, about 550 yards away, a kind of bridge. It looked like a line of boats placed side-by-side with a metal covering stretching from the west bank of the Canal to the east. On our side of the Canal, I saw Egyptian jeeps and soldiers under fire from our machine guns. In the evening I heard IDF tanks were trying to reach us but couldn't get closer than a couple of miles because we were encircled by the Egyptian army. Having heard them so often as voices on communications devices, it was weird to hear them live in real time. I heard the sounds of Egyptian heavy vehicle convoys crossing the Canal, and soldiers shouting which direction to take. Having heard them so often as voices on communication devices, it was weird to hear them live in real time. I used our internal communications system to report what I had heard to the operations room bunker. Sunday, October 7, 1973 5 a.m. Sunrise, accompanied by heavy artillery shelling, all of us at our posts. Suddenly, a mile or a mile and a half to the west, on the Israeli side of the Canal, we saw dozens of Egyptian tanks. The stronghold commander immediately reported to the operations room in Tasa. Then a company of Egyptian infantry and several APCs approached the stronghold, attempting to advance towards it. We opened fire with everything we had and they retreated. The screams and shouts we heard were terrible, but when they stopped in the late afternoon, we knew the stronghold had fallen. Afternoon. The Egyptians began shelling us relentlessly. Only after the war did we find out they were using Soviet 240mm mortar shells, and that was apparently what hit us. The shelling was so heavy that the stronghold couldn't withstand it, and we were ordered to enter the operation room bunker, which was supposed to be more bomb-resistant than the other bunkers, but it also began to fall apart and we had to use hand pumps to introduce air. Two soldiers were wounded in the attack, one of them our technician Baruch Zilbershatz. At nightfall the Egyptians were still shelling us. One of the things I couldn't stop thinking about, and shared with the others, was the possibility we would be taken prisoners. How would we survive, how would we remain alive and preserve our anonymity and secrets? Monday, October 8, 1973 In the meantime, the Egyptians escalated their attack on a stronghold called Hizayon, about four miles to the north. Listening to the communications network we could hear screams and shouting, but in the late afternoon there was silence, and we understood the stronghold had fallen. In the evening we again came under heavy Egyptian mortar and artillery fire, and the stronghold commander ordered us to enter the operation room bunker. I was running through the communication trenches when a mortar shell fell about a yard and a half in front of me, on the other side of a turn, and blocked the trench. In the meantime, the sole survivor of a tank crew arrived after having spent 24 hours wandering alone until he reached us. Counting him there were now 33 of us. We began
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