"A Bloody Good Exercise"

From the communiques it was easy to believe that what had taken place in Egypt was "an immaculate war." In London Defense Minister Antony Head announced that British casualties "did not exceed 85, of whom not more than 20 were killed." And from the beginning the Anglo-French high command emphasized the careful concentration on purely military targets, the deliberate effort to spare Egyptian lives and property.

Seen face to face, it was not that kind of war at all. "In normal times." cabled TIME Correspondent Frank White last week, "the Egyptian General Hospital at Port Said can take care of 40 patients in each of its eight wards. Last Wednesday night when I visited the hospital it had no light, no water, no food and no medical supplies. According to the chief surgeon, Dr. Ezzeldine Hoseny. more than 500 Egyptians had died in his hospital during the two days of fighting in Port Said. At one point corpses were piled nearly as high as a man's head in three sheds and covered the entire back lawn of the hospital. When Dr. Hoseny showed me around two of the sheds were still well filled, as was much of the garden."

Diplomatic Landinq. If it had not been an immaculate war. it had nonetheless--at least to the British and French way of thinking--been a highly satisfactory one. The British, whose regard for the fighting qualities of "Gyppos" has never been high, saw little reason to change their estimates. Although the Egyptian air force, according to R.A.F. estimates, outnumbered available "allied" aircraft two to one. it managed to mount only two fighter sorties against the British and French during the entire campaign. Some of Nasser's 50 Soviet-built Ilyushin bombers--perhaps as many as half--were believed to have been flown off to Saudi Arabia and Syria before the Anglo-French air attacks began, but much of his air force was caught on the ground. The British and French claimed to have destroyed 200 Egyptian aircraft and damaged 70 more, with a loss of only five of their own planes.

The British and French had all but telegraphed their intention to make simultaneous airborne and seaborne landings at Port Said. Their execution was painfully slow. The invasion fleet, much of which had to make a three-day trip from Malta, spent at least 24 hours longer than necessary reaching Port Said--presumably they idled at sea during some hesitation in British diplomatic maneuverings. In the end, without simultaneous landings and without prior bombardment the British and French dropped in slightly over 1,000 paratroopers, who were left to take care of themselves for nearly 24 hours.

Surrender Reversed. Given so much time to brace itself, even a second-class army should have been able to wipe out an unsupported landing by two battalions of paratroopers. Instead, the Egyptian army left Port Said insufficiently garrisoned and such troops as were there, after a gallant but ineffective initial resistance, rapidly became disorganized. By afternoon of the first day of fighting General Mohammed Riad, governor of Port Said, was ready to talk surrender (a fact Anthony Eden announced to a cheering House of Commons). But when he telephoned Cairo for permission, he was told: No surrender; Port Said must become the Egyptian Stalingrad. He was also told that Russia would shortly be raining rockets over London and Paris.

Instead next morning allied planes and ships began to soften up Port Said for a seaborne landing. When the bombardment ended, commandos, more paratroopers and armor began to pour ashore. (One Royal Marine Commando, 500 strong, made the trip from ship to shore by helicopter, thereby scoring a first in the history of amphibious warfare.) Some headed down the canal, got within 20 miles of Ismailia before the cease-fire took effect. Others, supported by tanks, probed through the streets of Port Said slowly cleaning out stubbornly resisting remnants of the Egyptian army and the irregulars of Nasser's liberation army, some of them children no more than twelve years old. Occasionally Hawker Hunter jets, called in for close support, swooped down to send their rockets smashing into a strong point. By the time the fighting ended much of Port Said lay in rubble, some of it 10 to 15 ft. deep. "It was all like a bloody good exercise," said a British paratroop colonel, "a lot of fun and very interesting."

Almost before the firing ceased, the British and French had frogmen down inspecting the hulls of the half-dozen ships scuttled by the Egyptians in Port Said harbor. Not until nine additional blockboats which had been scuttled further down the canal had been inspected could anyone be sure how long it would take to get shipping moving again (see BUSINESS).

One for the Books. In Tel Aviv Israel's one-eyed chief of staff, young (41) Moshe Dayan, was equally cocky. Stalking into a mamboing victory celebration at the Dan Hotel one night early last week, Dayan, still sweaty and crumpled from the Sinai fighting, exuberantly declared: "The whole thing worked just the way we planned it. We planned it for six days, and it took just six. We really finished up the Egyptians in four days, but it took six to occupy the whole peninsula."

Moshe Dayan, devout student of Von Clausewitz and of U.S. airborne operations, was perhaps even more justified than the British and French in his self-congratulation. "I am confident," said Israel's Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, "that military histories will make a thorough study of this remarkable operation."

Like most classic campaigns, Dayan's Sinai triumph rested heavily on surprise. "Nasser disposed his troops very well," said an Israeli colonel. "Egyptian preparations were quite logical. Our plans were not." But more than anything else, the Israelis, inferior to the Egyptians in number and equipment, relied on the kind of dashing, hard-driving tactics with which George Patton confounded the Germans in his 1944 armored dash across Europe. Israeli units which outran their supply continued to push forward as long as they had ammunition, and at least one battalion fought for two days without food.

Into Hellfire. Demoralized by these tactics--"Our best weapon," said one Israeli, "was sheer effrontery"--the bulk of the Egyptian army in Sinai collapsed like a pricked balloon. "The first night of operations," Ben-Gurion told the Knesset, "we took Kuntilla after twenty minutes of resistance, Ras el Naqb near Elath after a brief engagement and Quseima after forty-five minutes . . ." Only once, at the crucial road junction of Abu Aweigila on the Jerusalem-Ismailia highway, did Egyptian armor and artillery succeed in stalling the Israeli advance (TIME, Nov. 12). Tough Moshe Dayan, dashing about Sinai in a command car from hotspot to hotspot, promptly took charge. "Our infantry was inching along taking casualties under heavy artillery fire," he said later. "About 1 p.m. I told the commander he must take Abu Aweigila before 5 and darkness. I told him if he got in close the Egyptians couldn't use their artillery. At 6 he was still getting shelled. I replaced him on the spot with an officer who would charge into hellfire. Within an hour we took Abu Aweigila, and the road junction was freed."

By the time Moshe Dayan's six days were over, he and his men had chewed up about one-fourth of Nasser's army: two infantry divisions, one armored brigade and many smaller units, including several independent tank companies. At an acknowledged cost of less than 800 casualties, including 150 dead, the Israelis claimed to have killed 3,000 Egyptians, captured 7,000 more and destroyed twelve Egyptian jets. What impressed them most of all, however, was the booty they collected: more than 100 tanks (many of them heavy Soviet T-34s). nearly 200 artillery pieces, small arms by the thousands, and enough gasoline to supply Israel's civilian needs for a year. "It is only now," said Premier Ben-Gurion somewhat nervously, "that we have fully realized how great in quantity, how modern and excellent in quality were the Egyptian arms and equipment." Then, more confidently, he added: "But all this was of no avail because there was no spirit in them."

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