Saad el-Din Mohamed el-Husseiny el-Shazly (, )‎ (1 April 1922 – 10 February 2011) was an Egyptian military officer. He was Egypt's chief of staff during the Yom Kippur War. 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. He was dismissed from his post on 13 December 1973.

Early life He was born in the village of Shabratna, Basyoun Center, in Gharbia Governorate, in the Nile Delta, on 1 April 1922, in an upper-middle-class family. His father was a notary, and his family owned (70) acres. His father is Hajj el-Husseini el-Shazly, and his mother, Mrs. Tafidah al-Jawhari, is the second wife of his father. He was named after the 17th Prime Minister of Egypt, Saad Zaghloul. 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. As for the second wife, Al-Jawhari, she is the mother of Shazly.

His father's cousin is Abd el-Salam Pasha el-Shazly, who took over the lake directorate and the Ministry of Awqaf.

Shazly received sciences in the elementary school in Basioun School, which is about 6 kilometers from his village. After completing his primary education at age 11, his father moved to live in Cairo and he completed the preparatory and secondary levels in Cairo schools.

Commands Held

He joined the Military Academy in February 1939 and was the youngest student in his class. He graduated from the Military College in July 1940 with the rank of a lieutenant in the infantry in the same class of Khaled Mohieddin. In 1943, while a lieutenant, he was chosen to serve in the Royal Guard. He participated in the Second World War. Participated in the 1948 Palestine War. Founder and Commander of the First Parachute Battalion in Egypt (1954 - 1961). Commander of the 75th Parachute Battalion during the Tripartite Aggression. Commander of the UAR Battalion in the United Nations Operation in the Congo (1960-1961). London War Attaché (1961-1963). Commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade (participated in the (Yemen War) (1965 - 1966). Commander of the Special Forces (Parachutes and Thunderbolts) (1967-1969). Commander of the Red Sea Military Region (1970 - 1971). Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces (1971-1973). Assistant Secretary General of the League of Arab States for Military Affairs (1971 - 1973). Egyptian Ambassador to Britain (1974-1975). Egyptian Ambassador to Portugal (1975-1978).

Social Status

Shazly got married on 13 December 1943 to Zeenat Muhammad Metwally el-Suhaimi, daughter of Muhammad Metwally Pasha el-Suhaimi, who was the director of the Military College in the 1930s, and had three daughters: Shahdan, Nahid and Samia.

Involvement in the Free Officers Movement His relationship with Gamal Abdel Nasser began when he lived in the same building that Gamal Abdel Nasser inhabited in Abbasiya before the July 23 movement. They had family relations, and in addition to being officers teachers in the School of Administrative Affairs, they met on a daily basis. Gamal 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.

Airborne Corps 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. He then became the commander of the 75th Parachute Battalion during the Triple Aggression of 1956. He took command of the Parachute Force during the period from 1954 to 1959.

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. He suggested that the parachute corps parade walk by a quick step in front of the podium, and by that, he was the first to suggest walking in a quick step in the special military parades for the paratroopers, which became associated with the thunderbolt and paratroop forces and what distinguished them from other forces and were subsequently transferred by the Arab countries.

UN Mission in Congo 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.

The Arab Parachute battalion was made up of 5 companies (4 companies from Egypt and one from Syria), which got the name 'the Arab battalion in the Congo'. The battalion was stationed in the far north, more than 1,200 kilometers from the capital. It was the first Arab force sent to carry out foreign missions under the leadership of the United Nations.

Events developed and General Staff chief Mobutu Sese Seko led a military coup that controlled the country. Lumumba managed to escape, but he was arrested and killed in January 1961.

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. The new government was eradicating hostility from Gamal Abdel Nasser and demanding the return of the Arab forces. During that period, the dispute occurred between Colonel Shazly and Colonel Ahmed Ismail Ali.

After the killing of Lumumba, Shazly felt in danger and decided unilaterally to exit his soldiers from their positions. He also secured the smuggling of Lumumba's sons to Egypt before the Egyptian battalion withdrew.

Six Day War (1967) During the Six-Day War, Shazly showed great merit and tactical awareness. He was positioned in the middle of Sinai with a mixed unit of one infantry battalion, two Sa'ka (Thunderbolt) battalions, and one tank battalion. 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 eventually positioned himself in the Negev desert, behind most enemy lines. This feat made him one of the few Arab generals to ever successfully take and hold territory inside Israel.

He stayed there with his battalions under the cover of two mountains to avoid IAF bombing for two days, 6 and 7 June. Finally, he succeeded in making contact with the Egyptian command which ordered him to immediately retreat west of the Suez Canal. 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. His unit managed to cover about 60 miles of ground throughout the Sinai, without any air support or intelligence. As dawn broke, the column was spotted by Israeli aircraft, which made low-level passes, bombing and strafing his forces. Lacking anti-aircraft weaponry, his forces could only reply with machine gun and small arms fire. Over 100 of his troops were killed, but the Israeli planes eventually went off in search of other targets, and his column drove on, managing to avoid Israeli ground forces and reaching the Suez Canal. He became the last military commander to pass from the east of the canal to the west.

In the later years, he was highly respected within the Egyptian military for his feats and was eventually granted the command of the combined paratroopers and Sa'ka Forces from which he would move on to be the chief of staff of the Egyptian army and play a major role in the Egyptian major offensive in 1973.

Commander of the Red Sea Military Region During the War of Attrition, Israel was conducting lightning raids on the Red Sea region and daily kidnappings of civilians and the destruction of installations on the Red Sea coasts culminating in the incident of Zafarana on 9 September 1969.

Gamal Abdel Nasser saw that General Shazly was the most suitable person who could stop Israel's incursions into the Red Sea region and secure the area and appointed him commander of the Red Sea Military Region in 1970. General Shazly managed to stop the daily kidnappings that were taking place against civilians and employees who were taken as prisoners by the Israeli forces as well as stopping the Israeli attacks.

Shedwan Incident On 22 January 1970, Israel attacked the Red Sea island of Shedwan, near the entrance to the Gulf of Suez, 35 kilometers from Hurghada and 325 kilometers from Suez which had a lighthouse to guide ships and a marine radar, secured by an Egyptian thunderbolt, and its military importance was purely because it was an uninhabited rocky island and its area didn't exceed 60 square kilometers.

The Israeli forces bombed the island by air and followed it with the landing of the soldiers by helicopter and the landing boats in an attempt to occupy it, and a small garrison of the Egyptian thunderbolt withstood a huge Israeli fire, and the Israelis announced on the evening of the first fighting night that their forces "found no resistance on the island", except they came back and confessed at three in the afternoon the next day that fighting was still going on on the island.

Maj. Gen. Shazly ordered the attack of the island with the help of a number of fishermen from the governorate, which resulted in the transfer of soldiers and equipment in the dark to Shedwan Island to attack the Israeli forces.

Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces

On 16 May 1971, after President Anwar Sadat ousted the poles of the Nasser regime, in what he called the correction revolution, he appointed Shazly as Chief of Staff of the Egyptian armed forces, as he was not affiliated with any of the wrestlers on the Egyptian political scene at the time, and for his competence, his military ability, and the rich background he gained from his studies between the United States of America and the Soviet Union in military sciences as well as his long military career.

Dispute with LT General Muhammad Sadiq When Shazly was appointed as Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces, the Minister of War and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces at the time was Lieutenant General Muhammad Sadiq, with whom he entered into disagreements over the operational plan for the liberation of Sinai.

The LT Gen. Muhammad Sadiq was the first to see that the Egyptian Army should not undertake any offensive operation unless it has reached a stage that surpasses the enemy in the equipment and combat efficiency of its soldiers, only then can it carry out a massive offensive operation that destroys Israeli forces in the Sinai and advances to the straits and from there to Gaza.

Shazly's response to his proposals was that he would like this, but this opinion is not in line with the actual capabilities of the armed forces for the weakness of the air force and the lack of a mobile air defense that protects the advanced forces.