Principles – the Man Who Belongs to Upper Egypt – 10/10/2015

   The glorious victories of October 1973 will always present honorable and heroic stories of the Egyptian people. In the previous article, we spoke about the patriotic sense Egyptians share as each one of them hold Egypt in his heart and would sacrifice his life for her.
   We had depicted the heroic stories of the Admiral “Fouad Mohamed Abu Zikry” the prominent leader of the Egyptian Navy and today we are going to recount the story of another hero, General “Fouad Aziz Ghali”

General “Fouad Aziz Ghali”

   Lieutenant-general “Fouad Aziz Ghali”; head of operation of The 2nd Infantry Division in 1956, the Commander of the 18th Infantry Division, Second Army that crossed the Suez Canal in the war of 6 October and liberate the City of Qantara-Sharq in 1973.
   He was born at El-Minia on 10th December 1927, and graduated at the Military Academy in 1946.In 1948; he participated in the War at Rafah and the other wars that Egypt fought.
   He proved his excellence and brilliance in the mission he had to perform which was crossing the Suez Canal and destroying enemy’s fortifications during October war when he was the Commander of the 18th Infantry Division. He has also liberated the City of Qantara-Sharq and repelled enemy strikes and its counter attacks. He expanded the attack toward the east side of Baloza and Romana areas. History recorded the words of “Ahmed Ismail Ali”, Minister of Defense at that time, to the Brigadier General “Fouad Aziz Ghali” that he is destined to liberate ‘Qantra’ and that he wouldn’t stop encouraging him till he liberated it; only then he would restore his position again as a leader of the 18th Infantry Division as he was the Deputy Commander of the Second Field Army back then.

   The 18th infantry division depicted a heroic epic destroying the most powerful chain of fortifications ever “Bar Lev lines”. The Brigadier General, Fouad Ghali led his army presenting a heroic epic of patriotism, championship and sacrifice to liberate Qantara and our Armed Forced managed to control all the sites of the Israelites, then the 18th Infantry Division guarded the North area of Suez Canal from Qantara to Port Said.
   In a speech of the General Ghali, he described the process of liberating Qantara as following: Since the first artillery fire; the boats of the first stage were lodged to attack the fortified points. Then they started breaking through Israeli defenses from north of al-Balah Island till al-Cap and breaking through a fortified point to help the fighters of Port Said division. After 10 minutes of passing through the Canal, the first fortified point of the front ‘Qantara 1’ has been liberated. 50 minutes later, 6 fortified points were restored. ‘Qantara 3’ was the last point to be seized at the last hour of light on 7th of October, 1973. The outcome of first day of the fight was as following: all the fortified points were seized in addition to besieging Qantara city, holding control of 6km deep a heavy bridge over the Suez Canal droving Israeli forces to the back.
   On the 7th of October, 37 Israeli tanks were destroyed, expanding the control over the depth of the bridge to 9 Km and liberating the city of Qantara-Sharq by seizing the last fortified point “Qantara 3”.
   The mission was not simple as the 7 enemy’s fortifications were the most powerful lines of Bar Lev lines due to the effort exerted to fighting the enemies in the cities which is harder than desert’s fights. During the time of besieging the Third Field Army and occurrence of the gap, Ghali refused to retreat to west of the Canal, hence offering a great model of defiance and resistance.
He was appointed the Commander of the Second Field Army on 12th of December 1973 and he kept toiling for the sake of his country till the last day of his life when he departed us in 2000; engraving his name in the records of history.
   Many happy returns on the commemoration of October victories May God keep Egypt safe and protect her.

Anba Ermiah,
General Bishop
Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center