Negotiating a Truce
Heroes Remember
It was a very touchy time, but no there were arguments about land
because when they drew the de-embarkation lines it translated
on the ground almost a hundred metres thick. Now a hundred
metres in the desert can be a difference between a forward slope
which gave you command of the territory or a reverse slope which
means you couldn’t see anything. And so that had all the, we
brought in a, there was an engineer survey troop brought in
and they shot the line right down the centre, 50 metres on
either side. But no, basically you negotiated with both sides,
you met with both sides. For example, the Israelis wanted
to be sure that the oil wells were going to be secure. The
Egyptians wanted to be sure there wasn’t a lot of damage done so
you took a reconnaissance party in on both sides so they could
see what was going on. Oh yeah, and you saw, one drove out
the gate and you saw what was left and you owned it for a little
while and then you handed it over to the other guy.
The Israeli attitude, the IDF, Israeli Defence Forces were
basically they were pretty arrogant. They were pretty proud.
They’d won. The Egyptians were not about to admit they had
lost, so you had to treat both these feelings.
You dealt with two winners.
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