Outpost Budapest, 1973: An American in Israel.

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The Egyptian army used its commandos intensively in the Baluza-Budapest sector, and although they had some initial successes, most were killed off. During my own drive forward to Baluza from Jerusalem through El Arish on the third day of the war, we had come upon three Israeli armored vehicles sitting immobilized on the road shoulder and blackened from fire. We investigated, and noticed the penetrating entry holes of anti-tank shells, probably shaped-charge projectiles. No bodies were inside. The ambush was set, no doubt, by Egyptian commandos who either had been inserted by helicopter or had hiked quite a way from the frontline near the Canal, or a much shorter distance from the sea.

A few nights after the convoy left, I watched as two low-flying Egyptian troop-carrying helicopters were shot out of the sky by Israeli small-arms fire from soldiers around me. Contrary to combat practice, the choppers’ flying lights had been left on, making the ships inviting targets. The sole survivor was one of the pilots, who had suffered only a bad gash to his right thigh. Several of us carried him on a stretcher several hundred yards to the Baluza field hospital. He was a major, with a casual arrogant manner, who spoke Arabic, Russian, French, and English. He demanded cigarette after cigarette, and I listened as an Israeli doctor treated the injured leg and conversed with him, shifting from one language to another. When the doctor asked him about the flying lights, the pilot was incredulous and unwilling to assume culpability. He insisted that Israeli radar had locked on his aircraft and an American-supplied Hawk missile shot it down.

After nearly three weeks of high-intensity combat, the first cease-tire between Egypt and Israel went into effect. That day, I drove a water truck in a small convoy of three supply vehicles from Baluza to Budapest. Passing foxholes dug alongside the access road, we stopped to have a look, but did not venture out of our vehicles. “Don’t walk the ambush site,” an officer had warned, “there may still be land mines.”

We saw no bodies, but could see flattened black rubber assault boats with their outboard motors lying on the nearby shore, like a squadron of dead stingrays. The Egyptians had surprised and blocked the first Israeli relief force. The second convoy laid suppressive fire on suspected ambush positions and raced through a gauntlet of fire, taking casualties and losing one vehicle. A few days later, assaulting Israeli ground troops wiped out the commando force in a sharp firefight.

The word was that the Israeli infantry force making the successful attack on the ambush site comprised several platoons from the parachute unit that fought the famous Ammunition Hill battle in northeast Jerusalem during the Six-Day War. They had earned their reputation then as miktso’im, professionals. I knew one of the Jerusalem action’s heroes from my days at Kibbutz Hamadiya, on the Jordan River border. He was a lanky, quiet fellow, a lieutenant, who was said to have been far more outgoing before that savage short war. In 1967, his unit had been young reservists, not regulars. Now the men of that unit would be middle-aged by combat standards, and while they no longer might be as fit as younger soldiers, they would know their business.

Budapest protruded from the flat coastal terrain like a stack of low boxes, constructions of limestone blocks laced in place with chicken wire, the large bunkers, firing positions, and defensive trenches skirted by multiple webs and fences of barbed and concertina wire. The flat terrain around Budapest was pockmarked with hundreds of shell craters, into which ground water had seeped, now green with algae and skirted with foam. The scene recalled pictures of France’s World War I Western Front. Some communications trenches in the built-up area of the position were caved-in by direct artillery hits. The limestone-topped concrete pillboxes and bunkers were severely chipped and pockmarked by shellfire, but had held up.

On the Mediterranean shore just behind the fort, half-a-dozen Egyptian amphibious armored vehicles lay beached and burnt-black, disabled by Israeli gunfire after swimming a close-in flanking attack.

Looking north from Budapest toward the main Egyptian military dispositions, I saw scattered across the flat landscape a slew of blackened tanks and other assault vehicles. Many had the low silhouettes of Soviet T-54 and T-55 tanks. A grimy-faced officer offered his binoculars, his rank insignia showing the three bars of a captain (an American of that rank would wear but two parallel bars). I counted the knocked-out Egyptian armored vehicles carefully, one by one. They numbered 28 armored carcasses. A soldier casually called the captain by his nickname, Motti. Later, when I learned that the commander of Budapest was only a captain in rank, I realized this must have been him. His name was Motti Ashkenazi.

Some enemy armor had reached the wire entanglements at the fort’s foot, while others sat immobile as far as a mile or so across the flat sand, all disabled by what must have been witheringly accurate Israeli tank fire.

The reserve company that manned the fort crewed heavy weapons that made the difference. They also had the usual FN-rifles, Uzis, and light machine-guns. Most important of all were the two tanks. There also were mortars in sandbagged pits, and four artillery shelters in which French-built 155-millimeter howitzers were positioned to fire through slits from the concrete enclosures, which were scarred and chipped from multiple hits. Three looked intact, while one enclosure was burnt out. Grim black carbon streaks stained the outside wall around the shooting port. A sergeant explained, “One of our big guns was destroyed when an incoming round carne right through the firing slit. The place blew up. Ammo went off. I saw it from a trench. Flames shot from the openings like rockets. Killed six men in an instant.”

I did not look inside.

As with many Israeli fortifications, the reinforced concrete structures were mostly covered with a thick layer of boulders held in place by webbed nets of what looked like chicken wire. Apparently, the relatively loose rocks absorbed the impact of artillery and bomb explosions more resiliently than rigid concrete, which tended to crack under repeated hits, while the rocks shifted around, protecting the concrete underneath.

A pair of American-supplied Patton tanks proved key to Budapest’s successful defense. The Patton was called magach in Hebrew, which colloquially translates to “battering ram.” I climbed atop one and saw that the turret hull was scarred by numerous scrapping hits. Virtually all the external equipment had been shot off or hung broken: searchlights, radio antennas, machine-guns, running lights. However, the turret and large gun of each tank kept working, and the crews kept their discipline and focus. The tanks mounted the 105-millimeter tube, up-gunned from those that I remembered from Korea eight years before. These Pattons were still gasoline-fueled, not yet adapted for diesel engines, which would be far less flammable.

Piles of large brass shell casings lay scattered near the tank’s four hull-down firing positions. Dirt ramps led from one position to another. Minimizing exposure time of the tanks and shifting ramp positions reduced the chance of hits from direct fire by Egyptian tanks, flat trajectory anti-tank guns, and wire-guided missiles. Near misses from artillery fire do not ordinarily disable modern tanks.

A tank parked low on one of the ramps would be invisible from ground level outside the fort. In a forward positioned bunker with a good view of the front, an Israeli trooper served as target spotter. He used a 20-power scope, picked targets, and called via telephone to prepare the tank commander and gunner for shots by providing target descriptions, azimuths, and distances. When ready, the tank moved forward and up a few yards, protruding its big gun over the embankment, exposing only part of the armored turret. It quickly picked out and tracked the preselected target, aimed, fired, sometimes a quick second shot, and immediately backed down.

One of the tank commanders explained a positive characteristic of the Patton: this tank could depress its main gun to fire at an angle significantly below horizontal, to a greater angle than characteristic of other tanks. While parked angled upward on protected ramps, it could still engage targets below the horizontal plane.

Walking through the fort, I noticed that the ground was ribbed with courses of thin, variously colored, insulated wire. The telephone lines that linked positions were often cut by artillery shrapnel and explosions and had been laid redundantly and laid repeatedly. The use for the reels of wire that earlier supply runs had carried in was clear.

Years later, I sent a draft of this narrative to Dan Saks, an American-born friend who served in the IDF at Baluza after the Yom Kippur War. Dan was as a gunner in the Israeli version of the Patton tank. He was familiar with the various tanks employed during that war, and, like me, had later returned to the States. He telephoned and offered an interesting recollection: “Older Russian tanks, captured in 1967 and then used by Israel, carried a thick wooden log strapped atop the rear platform, behind the turret. When our guys needed to fire downhill from behind protective embankments, they had to drop the log and jam it behind the treads. Then they’d reverse the tank several feet to climb the log and gain an improved shooting angle. The British Centurion and American Patton tanks had the ability to fire at a lower angle than that generation of Russian models, even without the log solution. “

Dan’s respect for those who held Budapest moved me. When I called Dan to ask if I might use his description in my story, he was silent a moment, and then said, “Mike, there is no need to use my name. But you can, and I would be honored to be mentioned on the same pages as those who fought at Budapest. “

At Budapest, I asked about the doctor and medic who had volunteered for the dangerous relief convoy several weeks earlier, and was told that they had survived the siege uninjured, and earlier that day had accompanied the evacuation of wounded men.

Before leaving, I walked through the area committing it to memory. A tattered Israeli flag fluttered from a pole at the fort’s center. Two splintered picnic tables sat below. Metal shrapnel shards stuck up from the wood planking. Ammo boxes provided additional seats in the shell-cratered and explosion-burnt sand. Rough lettering on a board nailed to the flagpole read in Hebrew and English, “Budapest Hilton.” I liked that.

Five awards for heroism went to men who fought for Outpost Budapest: one Medal of Valor, two Medals of Courage and two Exemplary Conduct Medals. Although often surrounded and repeatedly and heavily attacked by tank, amphibious, and air forces, Budapest was the single position of the Bar Lev Line that held throughout the war. The steadfastness of the Budapest defenders blocked the Egyptian advance along the Mediterranean coastal road from Ports Said and Fuad at the Suez Canal’s northern entrance.

MICHAEL A. ZIMMERMAN is an American writer and business executive who lived several years in Israel. Earlier, he served in the U.S. Army as an ordinance officer with the Seventh Infantry Division in Korea.

Image: Mickey Astel/IDF

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