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were still Egyptian soldiers around us, though I doubt any of us expected trouble. Still, there were well-established rules for setting up a defensible position when an armored force halts for the night. As Eitan briefed his officers, I stood a few feet off to the side and listened. Suddenly, the commander of his AMX company interrupted. “Sir,” he said, “why are we staying here – right on the main road? There are Egyptians still out there. Behind us, for sure. And any force ahead of us will run straight into us. Why not a few hundred yards off to the side, in a place that gives us a view of any enemy movement, or allows us to ambush an approaching force?” I could see that he was right. I expected Eitan to agree and alter the arrangements. But he didn’t. I think that, having ordered his men to encamp on the road 20 minutes earlier, he was reluctant to get his tanks and halftracks moving again. No doubt, some of the exhausted crews were already asleep.

I parked our Jeep a few yards off the road. We organized a series of watches: Avraham, then Rafi and Danny, with me taking the pre-dawn stretch. A few hours later, Rafi nudged me awake. “I heard something,” he said, pointing west toward the Suez Canal. “It was faint. But I think so.” I told him to keep listening. For a while, everything seemed fine. Then, Danny woke me up. He said he was sure he heard a faint tremor, as if from tanks or APCs. I put my ear to the ground. I heard it too. I told him to go to Eitan’s command halftrack, insist he be woken up, and tell him. When he got back, Danny said: “I told him.”

“And?”

“Don’t know,” he replied. “He said I could go.” I tried to grab a bit more sleep before my watch. But barely 15 minutes later, Danny jostled me awake again. “I’m sure now,” he said. “Whatever it is, it’s closer.” I went off to find Eitan. But before I got there, a column of Egyptian T-55 tanks suddenly appeared on the road, 50 yards from the front of our column. I’m sure they were every bit as surprised as we were to be face-to-face with enemy armor. But they knew what to do. They opened fire.

Had we been deployed a few hundred yards off the road, we’d have seen them coming. If the battalion commander had acted on Danny’s warning, we’d have had an extra 20 minutes to prepare. But the shells jolted our crews awake. Within 30 seconds, they were returning fire. But our tanks barely dented the heavily armored T- 55s. Nearly every one of theirs seemed to score a direct hit. Within minutes, a number of our halftracks, and one of our tanks, were in flames.

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