Sagger Anti-Tank Missile vs M60 Main Battle Tank by Chris McNab

Author:Chris McNab
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472825780
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

Lieutenant-General Saad El Shazly (left), depicted here next to President Anwar Sadat (centre) and Commander-in-Chief/Minister of War Ahmad Ismail Ali (right), was an unfortunate figure in modern Egyptian military history. (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

A large measure of the credit for the initial success of the Egyptian offensive in Sinai must be given to Lieutenant-General Saad El Shazly, at the time Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces (1971–73). Born on 1 April 1922 in the village of Shobratana on the Nile Delta, El Shazly joined the Royal Military Academy in 1939, subsequently gaining combat experience as a lieutenant serving with British Empire forces in the Western Desert during World War II. During the war, he proved himself to be a capable and level-headed leader of men, and after the end of the conflict in 1945 his rise was little short of meteoric. He was the founder and commander of the first paratroops battalion in Egypt (1955–59), and in 1960 led the first United Arab Forces in Congo, within a United Nations deployment. During the Six-Day War in 1967, El Shazly was one of few Egyptian commanders to emerge with his reputation intact, when he was Commander of the Special Forces Corps (Commandos & Paratroopers). His successful night extraction of a combined infantry and armour force earned him lasting respect in the Egyptian Army, and during 1970–71 he commanded the Third Field Army, with the rank of lieutenant-general. He became Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces in May 1971, in which capacity he took the lead in developing Operation Badr. Despite the brilliance of this plan and the confidence of its execution, it was the Yom Kippur War that would prove the undoing of El Shazly’s career. Having fallen out with President Anwar Sadat over the conduct and future strategy of the war, El Shazly was removed from his post, and shifted out to unobtrusive foreign ambassador roles. Later in the 1970s, his alienation from the Egyptian government increased with his criticism of the Camp David Agreement and the publication of his book The Crossing of the Suez (1980), for which he was court-martialled for divulging military secrets (a charge he vigorously denied). A long period of exile and a subsequent imprisonment followed, a shameful treatment of a man who was one of the few to have shown leadership and integrity during the 1973 conflict. El Shazly died on 10 February 2011, and after the January revolution in that year his name was restored to a position of honour within public life.

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