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The war in Yemen is a battle be tween the 10th century and the 20th. The mountain tribes have no officers' corps or noncoms; they simply choose their sheiks and follow them into battle. "We captured 14 field radios,'' sighed Prince Abdullah Ibn Hassan, 25, a cousin of the Imam. "But none of my men know how to use them." Nor can they use captured tanks or trucks, since none of the tribesmen know how to drive. When they attack a tank, the tribesmen first kill off the accompanying infantrymen, then often set it afire with flaming corn stalks.
The Egyptians are restricted to the few rough roads and depend on daily delivery of supplies, while the royalists can fight anywhere. Says Prince Abdullah: "All my men need is bread and bullets. We will fight until we are all dead or the Egyptians are driven into the sea. We bow only to God."
Plastered Skirmishers. Yemen's roads and fields are littered with the remains of dead Egyptians left to rot unburied. "Let the dogs eat the Egyptian dogs," spat a tribesman. The few Egyptians taken prisoner seem dazed and dejected. Private Amer Hussein Bahid, 24, of Cairo, was due for discharge in January after three years' army service. Instead, his company was airlifted to San'a and rushed off to launch a counterattack at Beit Miran. Said he: "About 25 miles from San'a we were ambushed. My company never got a chance to fight. In a few hours, more than 100 of us were killed, and I surrendered. Nasser has apparently had to call up the reserves. Complained Sergeant Ibrahim Mohsin Alkati, 32, who was a Cairo truck mechanic before he was recalled to duty: "I didn't even know there was a war on in Yemen. I thought we were supposed to help train the Yemeni republican army."
One battle witnessed by Correspondent De Carvalho was at El Argoup, 25 miles southeast of San'a, where 500 Yemenis commanded by Prince Abdullah attacked an Egyptian position on top of a sheer-sided hill that was fortified with six So viet T-54 tanks, a dozen armored cars and entrenched machine guns. The Yemenis, advancing in a thin skirmish line, were plastered by artillery, mortars and strafing planes. They could reply only with rifles, one mortar with 20 rounds, and a bazooka with four rounds—handled by a man who had never fired a bazooka before in his life. The fight for El Argoup lasted a week and ended in a rout that cost the Egyptians three tanks, seven armored cars and 160 dead. De Carvalho asked a haggard sheik if his men suffered from battle fatigue. The sheik frowned: "We suffer from many diseases in Yemen, but battle fatigue—what is that?''