Part 1:

If you're a member of the army, perhaps you're sitting along the line right then. If so, you knew they were coming with a tiny bit of notice, but not much. One doctor, Avi Ohri, was on his reserve duty at the Suez Canal the day of the attack, and he was supposed to head home. Before he did, his commander told him an alert had been declared, and asked if he could stay an extra day, since he was the only doctor who would be at that fort. Around 1:30PM, he set up at a bunker. Perhaps an hour earlier, the Egyptian code words for an imminent artillery barrage had been picked up.

You would've had a bit of warning, and seen the boats coming across the canal. Some would've been sunk, but many others would've made it across. Maybe you, like the doctor, are watching as the soldiers attack. You've seen, like this doctor, a man who had a shell land next to him, and you've amputated his arm, giving him some morphine.

Maybe you're the commander at another post, this one called Budapest. You've taken out as many of the boats crossing as you can, watched them use water cannons to get past your sand barriers, and you're facing down Egyptian armor. You've told your men to stay under cover for as long as possible to avoid the artillery barrages, and the tanks are coming at you. You haven't gotten the bazooka shells you asked for, so you have no anti-tank missiles to speak of, but maybe you can hit the tanks with grenades and ignite their exterior fuel tanks. You've got two tanks that just arrived at your post, facing off with 5 T-34s on the Egyptian side, and you watch as the Israeli tanks demolish the 5 Egyptian ones. You see a long Egyptian column, and the tanks hit whatever they can; APCs, trucks, etc., but you've only gotten a temporary reprieve. They've got a lot of crossing points, and you know that you've only managed to slow them down here.

Maybe you're a soldier at Fort Purkan, and you're a major who called for artillery. You've seen boats crossing but can't do much to stop them. The Egyptians are firing artillery and it's incredibly loud. Your bunkers have held, you've slowed down their forces, you've failed to stop them. They're just going around you now, and you know it.

Perhaps you're like Ehud Barak, then just studying in grad school at Stanford for a couple of years. You've been the head of Sayeret Matkal, a military intelligence unit of great renown (though more of that would come later as well), but you're moving forward with your career and taking a break from the army in the US. This is typically done, especially if you want to move up in the ranks later, and become something like Chief of Staff (the head of the army, equivalent to some extent to the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) someday, which Ehud Barak eventually does before he becomes Prime Minister. You hear that war has begun from your friends in the military. Your friend is the Israeli military attache in Washington, and he tells you he doesn't think this is a major war. The news hasn't really reached him yet, though. You book it to an airport and try to get on an El Al (the Israeli airliner) plane back. Someone tells El Al that you're the former head of Sayeret Matkal, so you get bumped up immediately; they know you're needed back home. You set up a pecking order for who gets seats, prioritizing active soldiers and then reservists who have served most recently, then moving down the priority chain, so El Al knows who to fly home first. You get back, and due to your position, you manage to meet the Chief of Staff, who puts you in charge of a tank unit meant to shore up the Sinai front, which is going poorly. You finally get to the front after the first Israeli counterattack, which is a dismal failure. You're a 31 year old lieutenant colonel, but you also know many of the top brass, since you had that Sayeret Matkal spot, so you get to watch and participate in some of the military debates that go on as the counterattacks are planned, before you get sent out to your unit and hope for the best.

Maybe you're not at the front at all. Maybe you've heard the vehicles, and are perplexed. After all, it's Yom Kippur. You've gotten a call-up order; people are driving in buses and cars and trucks to pick people up and take them to the front. You start to pack your kit bag, say goodbye to your wife, and head to an assembly point you've had as a reserves member for awhile. Others are at the point, but you don't know the gravity of the situation. You're surprised and nervous, but you think this'll be over in a few days, just like 1967. You sing to show you're not afraid, people clap as you pass by, but you're nervous nevertheless. It's war, and you never know what will come in war.