evacuation 8.22.j Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

We had had very few losses in previous wars - I call them "de luxe wars" - but in this war, because of the surprise, in the first 24 hours we had great losses, and throughout the first days we had great losses. We weren't prepared and we weren't organized for evacuation and for telling the families and for registration. The amount of deaths in the whole war was 2,500, and many more wounded, and most of the losses were in the first days. The pressure on the hospitals was huge; there was a lot of logistics involved, and it was a terrible blow to morale when the hospitals were filled with so many wounded. We also made mistakes at the beginning of the war. The ratio between ourselves and the enemies... the Syrians and Egyptians had prepared their entire army, and from the very beginning of the war they used their entire army, and we were only using a tenth of our army, so in the first part, the ratio was 1:30 - 1:50. For example, we had one artillery battery and they had [Interpreter: "some number"]; they had 1,200 tanks, we had 300. So we had great losses at the first stage. When the reserve service arrived, we decided to take the initiative and not to allow them to take advantage of their success. So, although we were not prepared, we attacked with part of our forces on 8th October, just as they arrived, and again that was a mistake because we did not have the power, and again we suffered great losses. Only later did we decide to organize first and to switch to an offensive, when we were prepared to concentrate all our forces.