Able Sentry

by John Schettler

  It was Bleed ‘em and SEAD ‘em, the old one two punch that would soon deliver the skies to the Western Coalition, and leave the Egyptian Army to a fate much like that suffered by the Germans when they lost any chance of contesting the skies. Soon movement on the ground would be a hazardous affair, and the Egyptians were rushing to get forces across the Suez Canal to reinforce the brigades posted there near the DMZ.

  At the same time, Israel was moving its armored and mech heavy brigades into Sinai, ready to begin operations as soon as they reached the DMZ front, which was about 50 kilometers west of El Arish, where the 36th Barak Armored Brigade was lining up on the coastal road to move out. Brigadier Noam Koren had the brigade, a short, stocky man, with short cropped early grey hair for his 40 years. His 60 Merkeva III tanks would spearhead the push along the coast towards Port Sa’id. Up ahead on the DMZ, the border guards and soldiers of the Sharon infantry Brigade had been watching the Egyptians coming up towards the wire, but they made no move to cross the frontier.

  Brigadier’s Koren’s mission was to seize the vital Al Salam bridge on the canal, one of the few places with a permanent bridge in place. To support him, the Americans had assigned their 3rd BCT of the 7th Cavalry Division, so they would make good company if they ran into heavy resistance.

  Further south, the Army’s Armored Training Brigade, the “Sons of Light” was moving in a long column towards the frontier fort Hammah. That road wound west through Bir Jifjafah, and on to the canal ferry site near Isma’iliya. They were followed by the crack Golani Brigade, and these forces would join the Nahal Infantry Brigade, and 10th Harel Armored Brigade for that push. They would be followed by the 7th Armored Brigade, for the push towards Isma’iliya. Even farther south, the 401’s Armored Brigade had left Eilat on the Gulf of Akaba, and they were moving on Highway 55 towards the Sinai Hamlet of Nekhel, which was about 20 kilometers east of the DMZ frontier. There they would join the Negev Infantry Brigade, and 14th Machatz Armored Brigade to try and secure the important Mitla Pass, which would open the road to Suez at the southern end of the canal.

  Israel had a powerful army, with 2760 active tanks, and another 1060 in storage. In this fight, they would field six armored brigades, with over 600 tanks in the leading edge, but there were lots more behind that if needed. While most of the Army’s active brigades were assigned to the operation, there were still other reserve brigades that were already mustering, as Israel’s citizen soldiers went from civilian to military life in the twinkling of an eye.

  * * *

  General Gamel Abdul Nimr, known as the “Tiger of the Nile,” was the man in command on the Egyptian side, and he knew exactly what the Israeli’s were trying to do. Suez was closed, squeezed in his iron fist, and that was the way things would stay, as far as he was concerned. While he rightfully respected the power of the Israeli Army, he knew his own forces were more massive, and he intended to use them. Most of the Army was deployed within a day’s march of the Nile Delta, and his immediate order of battle had ten division size units, and just over 1500 tanks.

  That was a lot of steel.

  Yet there was one thing he worried about—the skies above the Nile Delta and Sinai. He knew the Air Force could only contest that area for a day or two before it was completely overwhelmed. After that, movement on the ground would be very difficult, and subject to withering attrition by the enemy fighter bombers. That thought was sobering, but knowing this, he would plan his battle with as little movement as possible. He would get forces east of Suez, dig in, and fight a grueling battle of attrition on the ground, making the Israelis pay for every yard of sand in the Sinai desert. Yes, he would make it so costly, that they would realize they could never reach the canal, let alone cross it.

  And that they must do, he realized. To force us to bow to their will, they have to cross the canal in force, along its entire front, and control it completely. That is an operation that I do not think even the mighty Israeli Army can accomplish, and they will certainly fail, as Allah would have it.

  The Israelis had already crossed the DMZ line in the north, making contact with units of his 6th Mech Brigade. He would wait to see where the weight of their forces would focus, and plan accordingly. So that morning, he called up the 6th Armored and 19th Mech Divisions from the Mansour district in the Nile Delta, but the enemy fighters were already attacking anything that moved on the ground. At Isma’iliya, 4th Armored Division was having a very difficult time getting over the canal to take up positions behind the 18th Mech, which had crossed the previous day.

  Patience, he thought. My units do not have far to move. There is little room to maneuver in this battle, and the closer the Israelis get to the canal, the more that holds true. They will soon see that they have bitten off much more than they can chew here. I could never take my Army to Jerusalem, not with air power being what it is today. Just the same, the Israelis will never get to Cairo, no matter how good their pilots are. Planes cannot take or hold ground. They will see.

  Chapter 15

  06:00 4 JAN 2026

  Brigadier Noam Koren of the 35th Barak had no intention of trying to simply bull his way up the coastal road. It was undoubtedly mined, and the desert to the south offered him an opportunity to outflank it. So the border post was not even attacked that morning. The Sharon Infantry Brigade was already infiltrating into the desert south of the road, looking to mark the routes through the heavier dunes for the armor. The 4th Kiryati Brigade would lead, and his 36th Brigade would follow. So reaching the frontier defense posts, he ordered his column to turn left off the road, into the desert.

  “General, sir,” came a Lieutenant. “They are falling back, and trying to block the gaps in the dune fields.”

  “Then we continue to swing south,” said Koren. “Let the Infantry mask our flanking move. Once we are beyond the heavier dunes, we meet up with the central forces. Then we swing northwest for the bridge.”

  To the south, the main effort would be led by General Isaac Meyr, commander of the elite Sons of Light Brigade, four battalions of armor, with two more independent battalions attached. That unit had trained virtually all the other armored battalions at one time or another, its name taken from an ancient scroll known as the war scroll, or the “Rule of War.”

  The scroll spoke of a war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness near the end times, which was what this battle was shaping up to be in the General’s mind. It was the second great war fought by Israel against Egypt. In the first, Israel took all of Sinai, while also seizing the Golan Heights and West Bank. After that war, they agreed to cede half of Sinai back to Egypt, with the frontier established in the center—not too close to Cairo, or Jerusalem. Any subsequent fighting, it was thought, would play out in that desolate wasteland, far from the populated centers on either side.

  10th Harel was already across the frontier, where it ran into the 17th Battalion of the Egyptian 18th Brigade at Bir Rud Salim. They were fighting for access to the Kahatmia Pass, which would take them on to Bir al Jifjafah, where a small airstrip was established. Flanking that pass from the south, the Israeli Machatz Armored Brigade was trying to reach the road. 35th Para Brigade had moved in under cover of darkness by helicopter, securing the far end of the pass, which was a low scrub filled valley between sheer escarpments as it approached the Bir.

  It would take all morning for the Israelis to push into the pass, which was soon veiled with the smoke of battle, a confused mix of mech infantry, with tanks moving among the men like war elephants. The Israeli cross border rush was coming to an end that afternoon, and they began to meet a stronger line of resistance.

  “Sir, their line is stiffening up,” came the report. “It looks like they intend to fight for the passes, and the natural routes through the dunes.”

  “Where else?” said Meyr, a tall, broad shouldered man. “This is just maneuver to contact, and that against only their forward deployed divisions. We will beat them, of that I have no doubt, but then soon after that, we will se
e if our plan can be worked, or if von Moltke was correct. Expect the unexpected, Lieutenant. War is seldom predictable.”

  That plan, as devised by the Israeli General Staff, was to maneuver heavy forces to the center of the board, and focus the main attack against Isma’iliya. Such a thrust would threaten to cut off Egyptian forces on the coast road if it turned north. As the desert approached Al Qantara on the canal, and the important Al Salam Bridge in the north, the dunes thinned out to a more barren, flat sandy desert, which would be ideal for armored maneuver. So the drive toward Isma’iliya was really a way to gain access to that ground if such a pivot north would be ordered.

  Below Isma’iliya, the canal reached the Great Bitter Lake, which extended down towards Suez. The approach to that area was screened by rugged stony highlands, gained only through three natural passes. There was Giddi Pass in the north, on a road that led to the southern tip of the lake north of Suez. In the center was Mitla Pass, with a road to Suez itself. In the south was the Sudr Pass, with a road that reached the coast of the Red Sea, over 40 kilometers south of Suez. All three would be choke points that could be easily blocked, but there would only be a token effort to test any of these approaches. Israel was counting on that center thrust towards Isma’iliya.

  The Israelis decided not to stop, but to press their advantage in night optics to fight through the confusion of Kahatmia Pass. They knew they had a lot of power on the roads behind them, and it was essential to open routes of advance. The US 3rd BCT of 1st Cav had reached the frontier on the north coast, and by midnight, the US 4th Division had passed through Fort Hammah on to road to Kahatmia Pass. If the Israeli brigades were the linemen, that was the halfback, a powerful, highly mobile force that could exploit any breakthrough.

  24 tanks of the Egyptian 79th Armored battalion were deployed near the small airstrip just south of Bir al Jifjafah. Another 18 were blocking the western exit of that low scrub filled valley in the pass. They would feel the heaviest weight of the attack as the battle erupted around midnight. The Sons of Light joined the Machatz Armored Brigade and blasted right through the Egyptian battalions, destroying both and leaving nothing but wrecked, burning Ramses III tanks behind them. They had killed 42 tanks, losing only eight Merkavas, some that were recoverable by the engineers. Those excellent main battle tanks were known as the “Chariots” of Israel, and that night, they were chariots of fire.

  The Sons of Light pushed out of the valley, overrunning Bir al Jifjafah in an hour, as the Egyptians fell back a few kilometers to Wadi Zahmah. Beyond that, was the open desert leading to Isma’iliya, but this action was just a screening and delaying battle from the Egyptian perspective. All that ground was being contested by just one division, the three brigades of the 21st Armored. The main defensive line in front of Isma’iliya was now being manned by a full corps composed of the 2nd and 18th Mech Divisions, backed by the 4th Armored Division, another nine brigades, and it was on that line that von Moltke roosted like a dark crow.

  At 03:00 on the 5th of January, the Israelis surged into Wadi Zahmah, and all of five brigades slammed into the buckling lines of the Egyptian 21st Armored Division. As the attack began, 1st BCT of the US 4th Infantry rolled in behind them and began forming up for assault operations. They could hear the thunder of the tank fire ahead, the night on fire in the wadi, and the US troops were eager to get into the fight. They had trained for years in the Mojave Desert, and now they were going to taste real battle. Behind them the 155mm Paladins were already set up and coordinating fire support with the Israelis.

  The 21st Armored had had enough. Sustaining 40% losses in tanks, it fell back onto an undulating sandy plain called Kathib al Makhazin, or the ‘inner dunes.’ They had fought through the darkness, and wanted to be anywhere but under the deadly fire of the Israeli Merkavas, but several battalions on the northern end of their lines were still in danger of being cut off. The artillery was jumbled in a long line, retreating along the single road to Isma’iliya. In the midst of this confusion, the Egyptian commander knew he had to fight.

  Brave men in the 21st, thought General Gamel Abdul Nimr. Such men could not be left to their fate in the desert without our support. His 2nd Mech Brigade was in position, and now he would order his first major counterattack to try and relieve the 21st and allow it to withdraw to his inner dunes line. That attack fell on the 36th Barak Armored Brigade, three enemy mech battalions supported by a single armored battalion with 20 tanks.

  As the fighting flared up, the ATGM’s of the Egyptian infantry were getting several hits, but ten minutes into the battle, the 4th Kiryati Armored Brigade of Israel came up to join the action, and that would end any prospects of success for the Egyptians. Yet it had done just enough to allow the battalions of the 21st to fall back, though they took heavy losses from enemy air strikes as they retreated.

  Fighting their way onto the inner dunes, the Israelis veered to the north and south of the main road to Isma’iliya, opening the way for the US 4th Mech Division. It had passed into the Kahatmia Pass, seeing the broken hulks of the tanks still burning there. Reaching Wadi Zahmah by mid-day, the division began to enter the low dunes and form for battle.

  As night fell, the Egyptians continued their withdrawal to the inner defense line forward of the canal. Thought it seemed the enemy had mastered the field, in the General’s mind that was an illusion.

  “They have taken nothing but useless sand,” he told his aides. “They have taken nothing that we have not given them. Now they come to the Canal, and there we make our stand.”

  The General was not boasting, for that is what had truly happened. In two days the Coalition forces had basically pushed all the units Egypt had forward deployed on the DMZ back to this inner line, but the real strength of their Army was as yet unfought. The night of January 6th, there came an operational pause as the Coalition forces now determined how they might proceed. January 7th would be the day that von Moltke spoke of with his maxim concerning plans—the first encounter with the enemy's main force.

  Expect the unexpected.

  That applied to both sides in this conflict, and something quite unexpected was now about to happen, over 500 miles behind the defensive front General Nasr had labored to build on the canal….

  18:00 Local, 7 JAN 2026

  Tobruk, Libya

  General Kinlan’s bold mission was about to launch, two days after the Israelis had opened up their operation in the Sinai. That had been deliberate, for it had pulled the bulk of the active Egyptian Army east into the Nile Delta, and across the canal into Sinai, thus reducing the chance that more enemy forces could be sent west. The sun had set at 17:35 that day, glowing orange fire on the horizon. The moon would not rise until a few minutes after 22:00, and beginning at 18:00 Operation Just Resolve would launch in complete darkness. The plan was to get everything into Tobruk in those four hours before moonrise.

  It was one of the most brazen operations teed up in years for the British. The Americans would go and invade where they wished, because nobody could do much about that. Now Great Britain was about to make a deliberate violation of the sovereignty of Libya, and send a division size force into that country to look after its interests. The salt in the wound was that Libya had nothing to do with the seizure of Sultan Apache. The British just saw them as a manageable foe, and their territory would provide a far safer route south towards Siwa—provided the Egyptians stayed on their side of the border.

  There were a hundred things that could also go wrong with this plan, thought Kinlan as he watched the Fleet Air Arm helicopters rising like dark locusts from Queen Elizabeth, and the French carrier Charles De Gaulle. Two French Mistral Class amphibious ships could also each carry 16 heavy or 36 light helicopters, so there was enough deck space to host the entire 16th Air Assault Brigade, and it was rising into the night sky like a vengeful swarm. Three army aviation attack squadrons would fly escort, the entire 3rd Regiment.

  Tobruk, he thought. It had been an important military outpost for centuri
es, right astride the coastal caravan routes. The Greeks colonized it, then the Romans took over, and in the 20th Century, their ancestors in the Italian Army took up that watch. It had been a great bone of contention between the British and Rommel’s Afrika Korps, and Kinlan was still haunted by dark intuitions and notions about the place.

  Tobruk… It was the best deep water port in North Africa, though not the largest or most used. 120,000 people lived in the city, and they were to be awakened to the thumping sound of all those black helicopters before midnight, some bringing in elements of 40 Commando as the rest of thar force swept in from the sea on fast landing craft.

  Once ashore the clap of hard boot soles was heard near the harbor as the elite force moved to control the docks and quays. They met little resistance beyond a few night watchmen and a harbor patrol, which they detained and disarmed. Behind them came the bigger landing ships, and it was not long before Kinlan’s brigade was growling ashore, to the bewilderment of everyone in the city. A few local militias fired off rounds in protest, but they were quickly dissuaded from any further action by a ruthlessly efficient response from 40 Commando.

  That night the British government contacted Tripoli, stating that their occupation of the port was only temporary, and necessary due to the expediencies of war. Libya, they promised, would be compensated monetarily for the “lease” of the port at a rate of 100,000 pounds per day, which would start adding up to something fairly expensive if anything went wrong with the operation.

  High overhead, F-35’s off Queen Elizabeth were circling on CAP patrols, their sensitive radars scanning the surrounding area for any sign of trouble. No one in Libya or Egypt even knew they were there. The Roll-on Roll-off ships were most efficient, and they had all been combat loaded, so Kinlan’s troops debarked as cohesive fighting units, and they would need no time to get sorted out at Tobruk. Time was of the essence, and their intent was to get south as soon as possible. The helicopters of the 16th Air Assault Brigade were already far to the south and would reach Jarabub Oasis just before midnight. They would deliver their battalions to their assigned landing zones, and then move to a designated aviation hub about 15 kilometers north of the Oasis.