by Moshe Betser
Raful did not command or give orders. He coached and encouraged Avigdor until finally, out of fuel and down to his last shells, Avigdor pleaded that all was lost. “Hold on,” Raful asked. “Just five more minutes.”
A request, not an order, it comforted us all with its calm, human understanding of how to overcome fear by looking beyond it. “You think it’s tough for you? It’s tough for them, too,” Raful went on, with the certainty of an experienced combat soldier, and an almost jocular tone that conveyed confidence. “Give it five more minutes,” he repeated. Those five minutes seemed endless, but just as Raful’s instincts predicted, the Syrian assault halted.
Now, on the hill overlooking the Valley of Tears, waiting for Raful’s decision concerning our mission, I agreed with Yanosh. Chasing after fleeing Syrian soldiers was a waste of the Unit’s talents. We belonged at the tip of the spear, as an integral part of our counterattack to push the Syrians back over the lines they crossed when they opened fire on Yom Kippur.
Raful finally spoke. “All right,” he said, turning to me. “Take your boys and join Yanosh’s brigade. Start pushing them back.”
Yanosh grinned, and decided on the spot to attach us to Yossi Ben-Hanan, a brilliant, brave armored corps officer who had arrived on the Golan that morning straight from the Himalayas, where he was honeymooning when the war broke out. Now, we began to push the Syrians back to the Purple Line drawn at the end of the Six-Day War, when we took the Heights to stop Syrian shelling of the Galilee.
Unlike during the Six-Day War, when as a reconnaissance force for a brigade we moved ahead of the armor, Yossi Ben-Hanan’s tanks now moved ahead of us and we followed in APCs and half-tracks. In short, aggressive battles, we forced the enemy back. While the tanks shot it out, we flanked the combat zone on foot and took out enemy tanks with RPGs and bazookas. We eliminated stubborn enemy infantry posts encountered on the way, and when the daytime battles slowed down, we guarded the sleeping soldiers and the parked tanks of the little five-tank battalion.
By the end of the fifth full day of battle, on Wednesday, we reached the Purple Line in our sector. The road from Kuneitra to Damascus lay in front of us. Chief of staff Dado Elazar wanted the government to give the order for us to push forward, to threaten the Syrian capital. On Thursday morning, the order came down to cross the Purple Line. By Friday morning, exhausted after non-stop fighting, we reached Hales, able to rest in an abandoned Syrian fort while the generals planned the next move, across the Leja, a bleak black stretch of volcanic rock between us and Damascus.
Notoriously impassable, especially for half-tracks with their rubber tires on the front axle, the Leja’s pumice was like a grater on cheese to the rubber soles of our paratrooper boots and the front tires of a half-track. Even an APC’s metal treads would be vulnerable to the hard, brittle rock when crawling across the Leja. But we needed to cross it, to bring our long-range artillery within range of the western outskirts of Damascus.
Now, stretched out on the metal bench of an APC, I waited along with the rest of the command for Raful’s orchestration of the assault. But as I listened, half-awake, to the radio traffic, I realized that Yanosh had continued sending forces ahead, including Yossi Ben-Hanan, leading his tanks onto the jagged rocks of the Leja, heading to Tel Shams, a Syrian fort halfway across the volcanic field.
Right after Yossi got the order for his five tanks to move forward, Raful sent down an order. “Stop all forces,” I heard him say, “until the start of the next move.”
“Yossi, stop your advance,” Yanosh relayed to Ben-Hanan.
The radio crackled with static. “We can’t turn back now,” Yossi finally said. “We’re in the middle of the Leja, about to attack. Let me continue with my assault.”
A long pause followed. Then Yanosh said, “Okay, proceed.”
That’s strange, I thought. Raful didn’t notice that Yanosh agreed to Yossi’s move. Yanosh said nothing to Raful about Yossi going ahead on his own.
I heard Yossi shouting at his soldiers over the radio. “Keep advancing, follow me, keep moving.” His voice trembled with excitement as he gave his orders, and they advanced on the Syrian position.
But suddenly a roar of Phantom jets drowned out all the sounds. I looked up. Two of our Phantoms, pursued by four Syrian MiGs, raced overhead.
The MiGs seemed very agile compared to the heavy Phantoms. But suddenly both Phantoms, the MiGs on their heels, rolled up and over so that they came out behind the MiGs, firing at the Syrian planes.
I tried waking Yonni to watch the dogfight but, exhausted, he only opened his eyes and then closed them, missing one of the MiGs trying to avoid the missiles by heading straight up. It turned into a tiny speck high in the air. Suddenly, a parachute opened high in the air and the MiG began tumbling and spinning out of control, until it crashed in a fiery ball of flame that quickly turned into a tall plume of black smoke on the horizon.
The dogfight over, I turned my concentration back to the radios, just in time to hear Yossi say that his force had reached the edges of Tel Shams. “We’re coming at them from an unexpected place and we’ll be able to surprise them,” he said, adding, “I’m going to make them pay for my ear.” A Syrian rocket exploding nearby on his first day in the war had damaged Yossi’s eardrum.
I did not hear Yanosh’s response, but after a long pause, I heard Yossi’s command: “Forward! Attack! God is with you.” I never found it appropriate to call on God going into battle.
The shooting at Tel Shams could be heard clearly over the radio. First one tank, then a second reported successful hits — and then being hit. Suddenly, only a crackling static came over the network, and then the radio fell completely silent.
Yanosh’s voice broke the eerie silence, calling out Yossi’s name. Nothing.
I started waking Yonni, to tell him we had work — rescuing Yossi and his force — when Raful came onto the radio network, talking to Yanosh.
“Okay, how many tanks do you have?”
The tension in Yanosh’s voice revealed his feelings as he told Raful about Yossi’s move. “I don’t know what happened to him,” Yanosh admitted.
But before Raful answered, Yossi’s voice came over another radio, a small infantry set tuned to our frequency that we gave him while assigned to his battalion. Compared to the excitement and energy of a few minutes before, he sounded calm but very tired. “Yanosh,” he said. “We’re hit. All the tanks. Casualties. My leg is gone.”
“Where are you?” Yanosh asked, worry in his voice. “Where are you talking from?”
“Outside my tank,” said Yossi in a very weak voice. “My tank … is gone.”
Silence replaced the voices, and with each passing second, the tension grew. Then Yossi’s tired voice repeated, “Yanosh. My leg is gone.”
I knew they were close friends. “Don’t move,” Yanosh pleaded. “Drink some water,” he suggested. “Close your eyes,” he tried, then realized the mistake. “No, don’t close your eyes.” Until then, his voice had calmed and reassured all who heard him. For the first time, I heard anxiety in his voice.
Now totally focused on the drama, I shook off my exhaustion and insisted that Yonni wake up. I briefed him on the situation and we called together about a dozen fighters, taking six apiece on two APCs, and started speeding toward Yanosh at his command post about half a kilometer east. The radio drama continued with Raful’s nasal drawl, easily recognizable over the static-rife radios.
“Your forces?” Raful asked Yanosh. “How many do you have?”
Yanosh’s voice trembled, very unlike him. “Five of my tanks were hit in an attack on Tel Shams. Yossi is hurt, his leg is gone.” He said it in a rush of words, getting it off his chest.
I waited for Raful’s reprimand. Instead, he calmly asked, “Why did you move without an order?” But he did not wait for an answer. “Okay, where’s the force now?”
It amazed me that Raful did not admonish Yanosh. Every tank was crucial to us. Yossi’s five tanks constituted n
early half the battalion at the time. And he lost them in an unauthorized assault deep into enemy territory, after Raful specifically asked for a postponement until he coordinated the maneuver.
But Raful listened without questions to Yanosh’s explanation. Just as we pulled up to Yanosh’s front command, Raful’s voice came back on the air. “Okay. We’ll take care of it.” That’s Raful, I thought. Never losing his cool. It took him a second to understand what had happened, and, that the problem needed a solution, not recriminations.
Nobody yet had mentioned us as the solution. But as the only unit in the area capable of such a mission, I knew it was ours to solve. I jumped down from the APC and walked into the circle of worried officers, hoping my smile would help reduce the obvious tension. Yanosh and I are the same height, a head taller than the other officers under the camouflage net. “Yanosh,” I called to him over his staff. “We’ll get your men out.”
His deep-set eyes burned red with worry. “Bring me Yossi,” he said. “You’ve got to get Yossi out of there.”
“Why only Yossi?” I asked with a grin. “We’ll get them all.”
As the daylight began to wane, Yonni and I took six fighters apiece in two APCs across the lines, to race across the Leja, following the trail of broken rock left behind by Yossi’s tanks.
About eight hundred meters from where Yossi began his assault on Tel Shams, the Kuneitra-Damascus road cut through the rocky plain, separating us from the fortified mound in the distance. We pulled to a stop in the vehicles. From then on, we went by foot.
Crossing the road, we encountered soldiers from Yossi’s force. They had abandoned their wounded tanks and had begun the crawl back to our lines. They walked hunched and apathetic, dejected and defeated. Some carried pistols, others Uzis. Several left behind their personal weapons. Their defeated manner perturbed me. But with Yossi still in the field by his tanks, I had no time to discuss the proper behavior of an IDF combat soldier.
“What happened?” I asked an officer among them, a fellow I knew from the Jezreel Valley. He later died elsewhere on the Golan during the war.
“They hit us bad,” he said. “Very bad. We were completely screwed. We managed to escape,” he said, indicating the soldiers coming across the road to us. “The rest …” he pointed to the burning tank in the distance. “I don’t know …”
“Where’s Yossi?”
“The burning tank,” said the officer. “Right in the middle.”
He seemed apathetic about leaving his commanding officer behind. It seemed strange they did not try to rescue Yossi. “What happened back there?” I asked again.
“Yossi pulled out his gun and threatened to shoot anyone who refused to follow him into the action. But it was crazy. Five tanks in broad daylight against the whole fort. It was crazy.”
His charge could be investigated later, I figured. Meanwhile, if anyone had survived, they awaited rescue before the Syrians from the Tel Shams fort went down to investigate and take prisoners. Ever since Yossi said he lost his leg, I envisioned him lying in the field bleeding away the last of his life. I called my men forward and we raced on, heading for the fort on foot as night’s darkness enveloped the plateau.
The night covered us in our final approach to Yossi’s tank, still glowing with a flickering fire from its open turret. I raced ahead to find Yossi, lying semi-conscious beside the tank. His leg was not gone, but, twisted into an impossible position, it was badly broken.
Crouching beside him, I smiled. Yossi drifted between consciousness and sleep. “I’ve been through it,” I said, remembering Karameh. “Your leg will be fine. You’ll be fine.”
A minute later, Yonni came with a medic, who began splinting Yossi’s leg for the stretcher ride back across the Leja. “I’m going to check the other tanks for survivors,” I told Yonni.
We moved quickly from tank to tank in the dark, knocking on the steel hulls, calling out for survivors. But after checking all five tanks, the only other fighter from Yossi’s force we found left behind at Tel Shams was a radio operator named Zvika.
The hike back to the APCs went slowly. We carried Yossi on a stretcher, while the volcanic pumice tore the soles of our boots to shreds. Once back on the APCs, we began to move, but the going was too slow. We decided to call in a chopper for Yossi and Zvika.
We found a narrow stretch of flatland where the jagged rocks thinned out, and the pilot negotiated his way in, trusting that we knew how to bring in a helicopter in an apparently impossible spot.
Quickly, we loaded Yossi and Zvika aboard and then watched the helicopter take off, heading toward a hospital inside Israel. For them, the Yom Kippur War ended that night. For us, it was barely half over.
GOING SOUTH
Exactly one week after the war began, the paratroops brigade took Tel Shams with only four lightly wounded casualties. New lines stabilized inside Syrian territory on the central front where we operated. We fell into a routine — if war can be called routine. I did not think the generals made the best use of our skills, but we kept busy through good old-fashioned behind-the-lines commando missions.
Our tasks ranged from crossing the lines deeper into Syria at night to reconning enemy positions and sabotaging enemy supply routes to hunting down tanks and foiling Syrian efforts to hunt our tanks.
Yonni and I divided the force in half, rotating assignments and missions. One night he went over to sabotage a Syrian supply convoy, the next night my force went over to take out a tank.
One night I crossed into enemy territory with a team of sixteen fighters to gather intelligence on Sasa, a Syrian position about three kilometers northeast of Tel Shams. We moved under the light of a half-moon, coming right up to the edges of the Syrian fort at midnight. We saw parked armor but no movement in the trenches.
We took positions, watching the quiet fort. There was only one way to test their strength — I gave the order to fire a short burst of fire. I have to admit that to the Syrians’ credit, they shot back. We waited until they stopped and then fired again into the fort, just to make sure. Answering fire came back immediately, inaccurate but intense. I reported back to headquarters that the Syrian position was well manned.
By the end of the first week of battle, Jerusalem wanted to send a clear message to the Syrians that if they did not let up their pressure, we could strike even deeper into their territory. But for our 175 mm cannons to hit Damascus, we needed to be at least three kilometers closer than our lines. Yonni took the assignment to get the cannons close enough to shell the outskirts of Damascus and then get them back to our lines before the Syrians responded.
The Golan stabilized, I knew the land still burned in the Sinai, where the Egyptians kept up their attacks, still pouring soldiers over the Canal at various points. I decided to go south, taking my regulars with me, and went to see Yonni with the proposal.
A few days after Avraham Arnan’s visit to the front, Yonni confessed to me that he agreed with Sayeret Matkal’s founder’s insistence that the Unit go back to base. “Arnan convinced me,” Yonni admitted. “So I went to Raful and told him I thought the Unit should go back to base.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He shamed me,” Yonni said, smiling weakly with embarrassment. “Raful said, ‘We did without you before you came, we can do without you now.’”
When I told Yonni I wanted to go south with my soldiers, he decided to stay on the Golan with Yuri’s reservists. The decision heartened me. The casualty rate among Yuri’s soldiers undermined the reserve officer’s confidence. I worried for him and his soldiers, and often during the days on the Golan I suggested to Yonni that he stick with Yuri’s force. But he preferred us. In any case, now, as I prepared to leave the Golan, Yonni finally moved to Yuri’s command car, and together they eventually ended up in the northern Golan helping to recapture the peaks of Mount Hermon from the Syrians.
I gathered my fighters, recapped the war as I understood it, and praised them for their good work.
&nbs
p; By then, we all knew that the other force from Sayeret Matkal on the Golan, under Giora Zorea’s command, went south to Hushniyeh but did not find any work so they headed back to base after a few days. Meanwhile, Amiram Levine had taken another force south to try to find work on the Egyptian front.
I told my soldiers to get ready for the trip back to the base, where we would gather assignments for a second phase of fighting. Although they knew me well, my soldiers decided I meant that we had finished our job in the war. Bearded, filthy, and hungry for a real meal after ten days of field rations, back home the soldiers went straight to the showers and then gathered in the mess hall for a proper meal, while I went to see Giora.
He had already lost his older brother, who fell as a combat pilot shot down over the Golan in the Six-Day War. Now, a second Zorea brother had died in battle. Yohanan had served in Sayeret Matkal for a while, and then transferred to the armored corps, planning on an army career. An Operations officer on the Golan at the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, he fell in the first hours of the Syrian onslaught. From the very highest levels of the army, a decision came down forbidding Giora to cross the border ever again. With two of six brothers dead in war, the generals decided the Zorea family had sacrificed enough.
“I’m going down south,” I told Giora.
“Amiram Levine and Amitai Nahmani are already down there,” he said. “After we didn’t find work on the Golan, they decided to go south.”
Like me, Amitai was a captain, a senior staff officer in Sayeret Matkal. As deputy commander of the Unit under Giora, Amiram took command of both Amitai’s force and a group of reservists attached to it.
“I’ll meet up with them,” I said.
“Listen, Muki, they’ve been down there ten days, looking for action. They have not seen a single bullet or Egyptian. You fought every day for almost a week and a half. Why don’t you wait here for a day or two, rest a bit?”
I took a sip of hot black tea before answering. “Giora, I’m going down,” I insisted.
