Battle of the Chinese Farm

Background

On 6 October 1973 Egypt crossed the Suez Canal in Operation Badr and dug in along the east bank under the cover of surface-to-air missiles on the west bank. Israeli counter-attacks failed, and by 10 October the front had settled. On 14 October Egypt, at President Sadat's insistence and against the advice of senior commanders, attacked eastwards towards the Sinai passes, partly to relieve pressure on Syria. The attack failed with heavy tank losses and handed Israel the initiative.

That day the Israeli chief of staff, David Elazar, won cabinet approval for a canal crossing, and Chaim Bar-Lev, who had replaced Shmuel Gonen at Southern Command (Gonen stayed on as his aide), briefed the division commanders for the night of 15–16 October. The site was at Deversoir, at the northern end of the Great Bitter Lake, where the Egyptian Second Army's bridgehead in the north met the Third Army's in the south. The ground on the east bank between them, beside the lake and largely outside missile range, had been left unoccupied, including two abandoned forts that controlled the junctions of Lexicon road, along the canal, with the two routes in from the east: Akavish and Tirtur.

Saad el-Shazly, the Egyptian chief of staff, writes that Deversoir had been identified before the war as one of the three likeliest Israeli crossing points, and that the 4th Armoured Division and 25th Armoured Brigade had rehearsed meeting such a thrust, but both were now across the canal. Just north of the Tirtur–Lexicon junction lay a former agricultural research station whose Japanese machinery Israeli soldiers had mistaken for Chinese: the ‘Chinese Farm’.

The armies

Israel. Major-General Ariel Sharon's 143rd Armoured Division was to open the corridor and bring up the bridges. Colonel Amnon Reshef's 14th Armoured Brigade, reinforced to four tank and three mechanised infantry battalions plus the divisional reconnaissance battalion, started with 97 tanks. Colonel Tuvia Raviv's brigade was to make a diversionary attack, Colonel Haim Erez's 421st Brigade escorted the bridging, and Colonel Dani Matt's 243rd Paratroop Brigade was to cross in rubber boats. Major-General Avraham Adan's 162nd Armoured Division, with about 300 tanks in the brigades of Natke Nir, Gabi Amir and Aryeh Keren, was to cross and exploit; Kalman Magen's 252nd Division would follow. Colonel Uzi Ya'iri's 35th Paratroop Brigade was added on 16 October. The Israeli armour was short of infantry.

Egypt. Brigadier-General Abd Rab el-Nabi Hafez's 16th Infantry Division held the southern end of the Second Army bridgehead and commanded everything inside it, including Brigadier-General Ibrahim Oraby's 21st Armoured Division. Colonel Abd el-Hamid Abd el-Sami's 16th Infantry Brigade held al-Galaa village and the Chinese Farm, with dug-in infantry, recoilless rifles, RPG-7s and Sagger wire-guided missiles, and the hill the Israelis called Missouri behind. Worn down on 14 October, the 21st Division had 136 tanks on 15 October: 66 in Colonel Sayed Saleh's 1st Armoured Brigade, 39 in the 14th and 31 in the 18th Mechanised Brigade. Shazly gives each Egyptian infantry division an establishment of 124 tanks and 535 RPGs before reinforcement.

The battle

15–16 October: the night battle. CDB90's Deversoir (Chinese Farm I) (576) runs from 17:00 on 15 October to noon on 16 October, Sharon against half each of the 16th and 21st Divisions. Raviv attacked the centre of the bridgehead from the east at about 17:00; he was repulsed, but the Egyptians concluded that Israel meant to roll up the Second Army's flank, not to cross. Reshef swung south of Akavish through the dunes and took the forts at Lakekan and Matzmed unopposed. Then the trouble began. A tank company posted at the Tirtur–Lexicon crossroads was destroyed by the 16th Brigade's infantry; the 18th Battalion lost about ten tanks to Saggers there; in all two battalions lost 27 tanks to anti-tank fire, and Abd el-Hamid sent RPG teams of ten to hunt the tanks that broke through towards al-Galaa. Pushing north along the canal in the dark, Reshef's force ran into the vehicle parks and headquarters of both Egyptian divisions, and was thrown back by counter-attacking battalions of the 14th and 18th Brigades. Major Nathan Shunari's half-tracks were caught in a killing zone at the junction; the reconnaissance battalion attacked from the west at 03:00 and its commander was killed; a tank company tried again at 04:00 and withdrew.

Meanwhile Matt's paratroopers, delayed by jams on the roads, began crossing at about 01:35, more than five hours late. By about 09:00 some 2,000 men and about 30 tanks were on the west bank, raiding missile sites. By 04:00 Reshef had lost 56 of his 97 tanks. After first light he attacked the junction from the canal side with long-range fire and took it that morning as the exhausted Egyptian battalion, short of ammunition, withdrew. Missouri and the farm held, and part of the roller bridge was damaged. Dayan suggested pulling back the paratroopers; Gonen and Bar-Lev refused, but stopped further crossings until a bridge was laid.

16–17 October: the paratroopers. CDB90's Deversoir (Chinese Farm II) (577) gives the fight from noon on 16 October to Adan, ordered to clear the roads and bring up the pontoon bridge. His tanks ran into Sagger fire on Tirtur. Ya'iri's brigade, delayed in the traffic, arrived about 22:00 and went in at 23:30 without proper reconnaissance or armour. At about 02:45 Lieutenant-Colonel Yitzhak Mordechai's 890th Battalion was pinned by the 16th Brigade's left-flank battalion where Tirtur and Akavish run within 2 km of each other; most of its company and platoon commanders were hit. With the Egyptians absorbed by the fight on Tirtur, a half-track company found Akavish open at about 03:30, and Adan sent the pontoons down it; they reached the canal at about 06:00–06:30. Tanks, including Lieutenant-Colonel Ehud Barak's battalion, extricated the paratroopers around midday after some 14 hours of fighting.

On 17 October Egypt counter-attacked from three sides. From 08:00 Saleh's 1st Armoured Brigade, with 53 tanks, reached the northern strongpoint at Matzmed before being driven back in a see-saw fight lasting until about 21:00. The 116th Infantry Brigade attacked east from the west bank and was halted about a mile from the canal. The 25th Independent Armoured Brigade, advancing north along the lake shore, was ambushed by Adan's brigades and lost 86 of 96 T-62s. The pontoon bridge was complete by about 16:00. That night the 16th Brigade, after three days' fighting, was ordered back, opening Akavish and Tirtur; Missouri stayed in Egyptian hands.

18 October: the west bank. CDB90's Deversoir West (578, 05:45–19:00) sets Adan against Second Army forces west of the canal. Shazly writes that by dawn three armoured brigades and an infantry brigade were across, that the 23rd Armoured Brigade, from the strategic reserve, was sent against them and repelled with heavy losses, and that a fourth armoured brigade had crossed by midday. On the east bank Israeli armour found the farm largely abandoned. Hafez was wounded by artillery fire that day.

Aftermath

Losses were severe on both sides and are poorly separated by day and unit. Israeli accounts give Sharon's division about 300 killed and 1,000 wounded; Reshef's brigade alone is given as 128 dead and 62 wounded, with 56 of 97 tanks knocked out by the morning of 16 October. The 35th Paratroop Brigade lost about 40–70 killed and 80–100 wounded. Egyptian personnel losses are not given in the sources consulted. By 18 October the 21st Armoured Division had no more than 40 of its 136 tanks, and the 16th Division about 20 in its own tank battalion; one Israeli count is 118 Egyptian tanks destroyed and 15 captured.

The corridor made the crossing possible. Adan and Magen drove south towards Suez, cutting off two Third Army divisions before the ceasefire, while Sharon's push north towards Ismailia stalled. In Cairo the crisis widened the rift between Shazly, who wanted armour brought back west, and Sadat and the war minister Ahmad Ismail; Shazly records Sadat threatening him with court martial.

Israeli veterans remember the battle as one of the war's most brutal; Reshef and Dayan, touring the field afterwards, spoke of a ‘valley of death’. Assessments differ: the attrition served Egypt's aim of inflicting maximum losses, yet the initiative passed to Israel; Shazly blames the Egyptian high command's refusal to bring armour back across the canal. Two later defence ministers fought there: Barak and Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, then commanding a battalion of the 16th Brigade.

Wargaming it

This is a combined-arms puzzle rather than a tank duel, and suits company or platoon scale for the junction fight and battalion-as-unit for the whole corridor over four days.

The defining feature is infantry with anti-tank weapons dug into irrigation ditches, village buildings and the slopes of Missouri, against armour that has outrun its own infantry. Saggers, RPG teams and mines should make unsupported tank attacks very costly, especially at night when the Israeli advantage in long-range gunnery is lost.

The key terrain is small: the Tirtur–Lexicon crossroads, the farm and al-Galaa, Missouri, and the two roads. Traffic is a real enemy: the bridges, pontoons and paratroopers were all late because the roads jammed, so a movement and congestion rule, or an umpire who controls arrivals, captures the problem. Fog of war matters too: the Egyptians took a day to realise that this was a crossing.

Decisions worth playing: does the Israeli player push the bridges down Akavish while the paratroopers fix the defenders on Tirtur? Does the Egyptian player commit armour early against the corridor, or keep it to hold the farm? What if the 25th Brigade had attacked from the west bank, as Third Army proposed, rather than up the lake shore?

Maps and pictures