Saad el-Din Mohamed el-Husseiny el-Shazly (Arabic: سعد الدين محمد الحسيني الشاذلي, IPA: [sæʕd edˈdiːn elħoˈseːni eʃˈʃæzli])‎ (1 April 1922[1] – 10 February 2011)[2][3] was an Egyptian military officer.

[1] He is credited with the equipping and preparation of the Egyptian Armed Forces in the years prior to the successful capture of the Israeli Bar-Lev line at the start of the Yom Kippur War.

His father was one of the owners of agricultural lands who married twice and had nine children with first wife: Muhammad, Hamid, Abdel-Hakim, Al-Hussaini, Abdel-Salam, Nadhima, Farida, Bassima and Morsyah.

Jamal Abdel Nasser opened it to the Free Officers in 1951, and Shazly welcomed the idea and joined them, but he did not participate in the night of 23 July 1952 directly, as he was in a college course Pillars of the war.

At the rank of major, he traveled to the United States of America on an advanced training mission in 1953 to specialized in parachutes and was one of the first officers to receive the Rangers School course.

During the celebrations of the Revolution Day, which was to be held on 23 July 1954, Shazly suggested to Major General Naguib Ghoneim, the commander of the Cairo military region, to show the parachute corps differently from the rest of the armed forces units that were walking in the normal step in front of the podium, as is well known.

In 1960 (during the unity with Syria), President Gamal Abdel Nasser sent a parachute battalion as part of the United Nations forces to Congo, led by Colonel el Shazly, at the request of Prime Minister Lumumba and in coordination with the United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, to maintain security and law and with the aim of preventing Belgium from returning to occupy his country, which became independent on 30 June 1960.

Events developed and General Staff chief Mobutu Sese Seko led a military coup that controlled the country.

Gamal Abdel Nasser then sent a military committee headed by Brigadier Ahmed Ismail Ali to Congo to study what Egypt could offer to advance the Congolese army, but the situation had changed.

Following the initial air raid and subsequent superiority of the Israeli Air Force (IAF), the Egyptian command had given a chaotic order for all of its troops to retreat westward which would cause most of them to be mopped by the IAF, especially after most communications were lost between the troops and the Egyptian command; Shazly, however, took the most unbelievable of chances and headed eastward through thin passages, invading Israel itself.

He responded with one of the most difficult maneuvers executed in the history of the Egyptian–Israeli conflict, a night march (with mechanized units and tanks accompanying) in the desert and through enemy lines.

Shazly started to develop an offensive plan according to the capabilities of the armed forces, which required the recovery of 10 to 12 km in the depth of Sinai.

From the political point of view, it will achieve nothing and 60,000 square kilometers of Sinai will remain under Israeli control, but militarily it will create, for the Egyptian army a difficult position instead of the current one since it depends on the Suez Canal to act as a natural barrier, while the transportation lines through the bridges erected in the canal will be at the mercy of the Israeli air force.

After lengthy discussions between Shazly and Muhammwd Sadiq, Shazly reached a compromise, which is the preparation of two plans, the first aimed at occupying the Straits, which he called Operation 41 and the second aimed at seizing the Bar Lev Line and called it the Operation Badr, but Muhammad Ahmed Sadiq was not convinced and from his point of view, Egypt would not tolerate another defeat.

Indeed, Ahmed Ismail did not set foot during the six months he spent as chief of staff at the Inshas base, in which Shazly worked as commander of the Special Forces (Thunderbolts and Paratroopers) until Ahmed Ismail was referred to retirement by order of President Gamal Abdel Nasser on 9 September 1969, following the incident of the Israeli raid on Zafarana in the Gulf of Suez.

On 26 October 1972, President Anwar Sadat dismissed Lieutenant General Mohamed Ahmed Sadiq for their disagreement over the transit plan.

In 1978, President Anwar Sadat issued his memoirs "In Search of Identity", in which he accused Lieutenant General Shazly of inaction and held him responsible for causing the breach.

In his memoirs, Lieutenant General Shazly accused President Anwar Sadat of making wrong decisions despite all the advice from the generals around him, and his continuous interference in military plans during the course of operations on the front, which led to causing the breach and misleading the people by concealing the truth of the breach, The destruction of the missile wall, and besieging the Third Army for a period exceeding three months.

In those memoirs, he also accused Sadat of giving up the victory and agreeing to withdraw most of the Egyptian forces to the west of the canal in the first disengagement negotiations.

Lieutenant General Saad el-Shazly, Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces (41) issued a directive clarifying the manner in which soldiers perform their combat duties during the October 1973 war.

It was the most complex problem that the group had met with and it was the earthen embankment on the east bank of the canal, which gave the Israeli side the advantage of controlling the fire, and the remark against the forces crossing, and this led to the suggestion of the need to build high strong points equipped with terraces of tanks on the West Bank of the Suez Canal, allowing the Egyptian side to secure its forces that cross the channel with fire and information.

LT Gen. Shazly had to collect the combat experience from the Egyptian forces' actions and lessons learned immediately after the event, and it will be distributed to members of the armed forces to benefit from them in any future similar operations, for example, guidance for securing radars in isolated areas after they raid Israeli on one of the isolated radars in Zafarana, and began to issue that directive when the Shazly team was reviewing the offensive operation plan to storm the Suez Canal and destroy the Bar Lev Line, and it was found that there are many problems that hinder and affect the planning of the offensive operation.

This guidance included a detailed plan for the transit of forces; Starting with the number of soldiers in each boat and the arming of each soldier and the size of the ammunition he carries either for himself or for the supporting forces, and the matter reached the timing of the entry of transit equipment to the canal area from rubber boats to bridges equipment and method of protection and locations of smoke generators and air defense etc.

At 2 pm 6 October 1973, under General Shazly's command, 200 Egyptian aircraft skimmed low over the canal, headed deep into Sinai and struck the Israeli key forces, while 2000 artillery pieces opened heavy bombardment on the Bar-Lev forts and minefields, under which cover engineer reconnaissance teams paddled over to check the outlets for the Israeli inflammable liquid that had been blocked from the night before.

The first assault wave of 4000 men crossed the Suez Canal and opened 70 passages through the sand barrier using high pressure water pumps.

General Shazly strongly opposed any eastward advance that would leave Egyptian forces exposed to IAF without adequate air cover.

Once again president Sadat refused General Shazly's plan to move some of the Egyptian's armored brigades to fight the Israeli troops.