Sarah Saad
Mohamed Taha, esteemed for his valour in the 1973 October War, spoke about how he joined the Egyptian army.
Delivering a speech on the occasion of the 10th of Ramadan victory anniversary, he recounted the circumstances that surrounded this development in his life.
Schoolteachers, he said, were hired [by the schools] as soon as they graduated from college, due to an acute shortage in the number of teachers then.
He added that as soon as he was hired by one of the schools, he asked himself a question about whether it was time for him to perform his military service.
“Am I not a man like my friends who had joined the army to serve in it?” Taha recalled as asking himself then.
He discovered, however, that he had a military service postponement for four years.
Although Taha was married at the time, he headed to the Education Director to notify him of his rejection of the military service postponement and his desire to serve in the army.
He remembered the Education Director as telling him that the matter was out of his hands.
“As a teacher, you have to obey the laws regulating the military service of this category of people,” Taha added, quoting the Education Director.
He had then to send telegrams to the ministers of education and defence. He also had to pay three visits to the Recruitment Administration before he started his journey as a member of the Egyptian ground troops between 1972 and 1976.
Taha talked about the tricks the late president, Anwar el-Sadat, employed ten days before staging the war.
The president, he said, sent a group of army officers and soldiers to perform the minor pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.
He added that the late Egyptian leader also terminated the military service of other officers and soldiers who were summoned to join the ranks of the army during the battle.
“This caused Israel to believe that Egypt would not launch the war,” Taha said.
He praised the selection of the timing of the war as another trick by the Egyptian leadership.
The world, he said, was accustomed to wars being waged with the crack of dawn.
“Nowhere in recorded history there is a war that was staged at 2:00 p.m.,” Taha said.
He added that October 6 was a day as usual on the Israeli side, until the Egyptians started their first airstrike at noon.
He said when the war started, the rays of the sun were behind Egyptian troops, not in front of them, which helped them to see clearly, whereas the same rays were in front of Israeli troops which weakened their ability to see clearly.
“This showed that the decision about the timing of the war was correct,” Taha said.
Last hours before the war
Taha said nobody knew of the timing of the war until the evening of the 10th of Ramadan/6 October, 1973.
Despite this, he said, the troops trained in crossing the Bar Lev Line and the war barrier.
The training was so tough, he added, that there was no difference between it and the actual war.
He noted that on the 9th of Ramadan/5 October, the troops received commands to start moving at the time of the dusk.
“As combatants, we thought this was yet a new training,” Taha said. “The leadership knew, however, that the time of the war was approaching.”
He said he and his colleague wore the battle uniform and started moving towards the canal line.
They arrived in the gardens area in Suez, a place where there is a concentration of trees that covered the troops and prevented the enemy from tracking them.
Taha and other troops spent the night in this area.
“We had strange feelings at the time,” Taha said. “The meal we had eaten was also different from those we ate during the traditional training.”
Taha and his colleagues learned then that this was the meal of the war.
10th of Ramadan/October 7 war and crossing
The Egyptian air force carried out its strikes, including by attacking the enemy infantry.
At the western bank of the Suez Canal, Egyptian troops were inflating their inflatable boats to start the crossing of the canal.
“We were crossing and each of the troops had a weight of almost 200 kilograms,” Taha said.
Each of the troops, he added, carried his equipment, helmet, boots … etc.
“Despite this weight and the fasting, we felt no suffering or pain,” Taha said. “We only chanted Alahu Akbar (God is Great).”
He said victory in the war was a gift from God Who knew that the Egyptians only wanted to liberate their land and preserve their dignity.
“The Ramadan war was like the Battle of Badr, the first battle in the history of Islam,” Taha said. “We felt that God was by our side all through the war.”
Story of most famous victory sign, its meaning
Taha said there was a big story behind the victory sign, one that was far from haphazard.
He and his colleague were in the middle of a tough battle. They headed to an area called ‘Springs of Musa’. One of his colleagues was injured by shrapnel that caused his leg to be completed.
He and his colleagues had to carry their injured colleague to the nearest point east of the canal to prevent the bleeding from causing his death.
They had to carry their colleague for almost half a kilometre.
“I volunteered to carry him and another colleague volunteered to carry the amputated leg,” Taha said.
They then crossed the Suez Canal by swimming. At the time, the canal course was far from clean, given the presence of a large number of sunken ships after the 1967 defeat.
“Swimming in the canal was very difficult at the time,” Taha said.
“Despite this, we succeeded in reaching the nearest point with our injured colleague so that he could receive treatment,” Taha said.
At that time, Taha chose to return to the west bank of the canal through one of the gaps and passages that were opened during the crossing hours, instead of swimming back.
On his way, he met a journalist called Farouk Ibrahim.
“I want to snap you on camera,” the journalist told Taha.
Taha immediately approved the journalist’s request, without any prior preparation for the photo.
“I stood up and raised my finger in the way the photo was taken, without any thought and very spontaneously,” Taha said.
He said pointing with the index and the middle fingers and hiding the other fingers aimed to symbolise the map of Sinai.
“The Gulf of Aqaba is represented by the index finger,” Taha said.
“The middle finger represents the Gulf of Suez and embraces the precious land of Sinai,” he added.
He noted that this is represented by the space between the two fingers.
“I wanted to reassure Egyptians and the world that it is over that Sinai is in our hands again,” Taha said.
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