I didn't like this solution, so I hacked up something else.  I made a new single wrapper script to handle all of the utils.  It then executes the correct command based on the zeroth argument (see below).

I think moved all the binaries to give them .bin suffixes, and the made links to the new wrapper script.  Now everything should work as expected, with this new retry feature.

controls@rosalba:/ligo/apps/linux-x86_64/gds-2.15.1/bin 0$ for pgm in ezcaread ezcawrite ezcaservo ezcastep ezcaswitch; do mv $pgm{,.bin}; ln ezcawrapper $pgm; done
controls@rosalba:/ligo/apps/linux-x86_64/gds-2.15.1/bin 0$ cat ezcawrapper
#!/bin/bash

retries=5

pgm="$0"
run="${pgm}.bin"

if ! [ -e "$run" ] ; then
    cat <&2
This is the ezca wrapper script.  It should be hardlinked in place of
the ezca commands (ezcaread, ezcawrite, etc.), and executing the
original binaries (that have been moved to *.bin) with $retries
failure retries.
EOF
    exit -1
fi

if [ -z "$@" ] || [[ "$1" == '-h' ]] ; then
    "$run"
    exit
fi

for try in $(seq 1 "$retries") ; do
    if "$run" "$@"; then
	exit
    else
	echo "retrying ($try/$retries)..." >&2
    fi
done
echo "$(basename $pgm) failed after $retries retries." >&2
exit 1