No Mission Is Impossible (22 page)

He decided to move forward. As he advanced, he was surprised to encounter a Syrian tank between one hundred and 130 feet to his right. Fortunately, the dust hid him from the enemy tank, and the Syrian soldiers couldn't make out who he was.

Kahalani stopped his tank and shouted at his gunner, “Shoot it fast!” The shell struck the center of the Syrian tank, and it burst into flames. They had barely exhaled in relief when another three Syrian tanks appeared. The gunner fired, setting another tank on fire, while Kahalani
pointed at the second tank, which had managed, in the interim, to identify them and aim its barrel. “Fire! Fire!” Kahalani shouted at the gunner, but the tank didn't fire; the shell casing had gotten stuck. In these critical moments, two of the tank crewmen acted frantically, attempting to extract the empty shell casing, pulling at it virtually with their fingernails. At the last second, the hollow casing came out; a new shell went in and was fired straight into the front of the Syrian tank. The third tank was also destroyed.

“We must make a supreme effort to bring every possible tank to the area,” Kahalani said over the radio to Brigade Commander Ben-Gal, who responded, “Starting now, you are the area commander. I'm connecting all the forces to your radio network. And Avigdor, take care of yourself!”

These were the pivotal moments in the battle for the Golan. The question was who would be first to capture the positions on a hill some sixteen hundred feet away. A hundred and fifty Syrian tanks entered the valley, with just Kahalani left to face them. He destroyed ten tanks in a nearby wadi, while calling for help from the brigade.

The picture before him was frightening, and Kahalani radioed Ben-Gal again, asking him to send every possible tank to the area to halt the Syrians. The brigade commander dispatched a battalion that was fighting a couple of miles to the north. The battalion had just eight tanks remaining but sped toward Kahalani and stopped behind him. Kahalani ordered them to close off the approach of the wadi so that he could move southward, collect the rest of the tanks and charge. While advancing toward the new positions, five of the battalion tanks were immediately hit, and its commander was killed. Kahalani assigned one of the tanks that had run out of ammunition to block the wadi entrance. He headed south with the rest of the battalion's remaining tanks; seven tanks from another company joined him.

Over the radio, suddenly, Kahalani's voice stopped in midsentence replaced by the thunder of a terrific explosion. One of the soldiers called the deputy battalion commander. Kahalani was killed, he announced. Kahalani was unable to deny the report—he was facing another tank
and was more focused on the gunner than on the radio. Only minutes later did he announce by radio that everything was fine, and that he was still alive.

“A stations,” he radioed. “This is Kahalani. A large Syrian force is moving against us. . . . Our goal is to capture the positions on the hill and then take control of the valley from above. . . . Move! Take the positions and destroy the Syrians.” However, paralyzed by fear, the soldiers didn't charge. Kahalani grabbed his microphone again. “Watch the Syrians. See how well they're fighting. See their motivation. What do I see in our battalion? Cowards? We're Jews! We're Israelis! What, we're better than those people and not capable of repelling them? Come on, guys, I'm asking you to start moving.”

Kahalani charged. A moment later another tank followed, then another, and another and another. . . .

The Syrians were sweeping over the ridge, their tanks crossing the Israeli defense line. Meir (“Tiger”) Zamir, a company commander, reported the approach of enemy tanks from his front and from his back; he was left without a single shell, he said. Five Syrian tanks charged Tiger's force but a young major, Avinoam Baruchin, set two alight. “They're crushing us,” Baruchin shouted. Syrian tanks approached Kahalani's force unchecked, killing and wounding dozens of Israelis.

“Nobody retreats a single step!” Ben-Gal thundered on the radio. He later recalled this fateful moment. “For twenty or thirty minutes, no one was in control of the soldiers—not the company commanders, not the battalion commander and not the brigade commander. Everyone was fighting his own war. I was planning to give instructions to retreat and had taken my microphone in hand, but told myself that we'd wait a little longer. . . . I called Raful and said that we cannot hold any longer. Raful asked that we hold ‘only a little more.'”

As the battle continued, Israeli units kept collapsing under Syrian pressure. Just over thirteen hundred feet separated them from seizing the controlling positions that would determine the battle's outcome. With a tremendous effort they advanced and reached the coveted positions, opening fire on the Syrian tanks. At that very moment, eleven tanks under
the command of Lieutenant Colonel Yossi Ben-Hanan arrived and joined Kahalani's forces. Kahalani recalled later that they fired “like crazy” at the Syrians, managing to hit approximately 150 of their tanks.

And all of a sudden the Syrians started pulling back!

Ben-Gal later said, “I was sure we'd lost the battle. If it had gone on another half hour, we would have lost. For whatever reason, the Syrians broke down first and decided to retreat. They apparently assumed they didn't have a chance to win. They didn't know the truth, that our situation was desperate.”

The perception on the ground was that the rapport between the two fighting forces had started to reverse.

“Victory is in our hands!” Kahalani shouted excitedly over the radio. “They're retreating and we are wiping them out!”

“You're tremendous,” Ben-Gal responded. “You're a hero of Israel. You're all heroes! I love you. Take care of yourself.”

“Gentlemen,” the voice of Division Commander Raful Eitan broke into the radio receivers, “you saved the people of Israel.”

The fighting to stop the Syrians went on without pause for four days and three nights. The remnants of the IDF armor had to fight without backing from the air force, the infantry, the artillery, the engineering corps, anti-aircraft batteries; they badly lacked the necessary equipment for nighttime combat. “We felt as if the nation had abandoned us,” Kahalani said, “as if we had been thrown onto the battlefield with a ratio of one Israeli tank against eight Syrian ones. For us, it was a great shock.”

And yet, the Syrians were routed.

The Syrian forces retreated in a disorderly way, leaving behind 867 tanks and thousands of other vehicles. Kahalani and his comrades reconquered all of the lost territories and even penetrated into Syrian territory.

By the end of the war, the 7th Armored Brigade had lost seventy-six fighters. For Kahalani, the joy of triumph mixed with great personal sadness. His brother Emanuel had been killed in the tank battles in Sinai; also killed was his wife's brother, Ilan, another tank soldier. For his feats during the war, Kahalani would receive the Medal of Valor.

   
AVIGDOR KAHALANI, LATER THE DEPUTY COMMANDER OF THE FIELD CORPS

          
“I had several brushes with death during the war. I remember one such instance in Syrian territory. I was in the tank turret. A Syrian plane passed over my tank, shooting a burst of machine-gun fire over my head. It turned around and came at us from behind, and I didn't see it, focused as I was in running the battle. My operations officer looks back and sees the plane dropping its bombs in our direction, and then he punches me in the face and shouts, ‘Get inside, fast.' I didn't understand what was happening. I got inside the tank and clung to the side. The bomb hit my tank. I heard a huge explosion and realized that I was not alive anymore. I was covered in gunpowder and passed my hands over my body to check whether I still had all my limbs. My body was shaking as if it had been jolted by an electric shock.

              
“I pulled my head out, saw a giant cloud of smoke and a twenty-six-foot-deep hole around me. I looked right and left and saw a terrible sight—all the tank commanders who had been next to me, standing in the turrets with their heads out in the open, had been killed.

              
“But there was also a happy moment that I remember: they had promised us before the war that, for every Syrian tank that was hit, we would get a crate of champagne. At the end of the fighting, I sat in my tank and tried to count how many burned-out Syrian tanks there were in the valley, but I couldn't calculate the number of champagne crates because there were so many.”

As the war nears its end, the Golani Brigade makes a tremendous effort to retake the “eyes of the nation”—the Hermon fort with its array of antennas, watching and listening devices.

I
don't want to look at the Hermon mountains anymore,” the disheveled, sooty Benny Massas said. “My comrades' blood was spilled here like water.” Benny was a Tiberias boy, a stocky, tousled Golani fighter wearing a green army cap. He was facing a television reporter on top of Mount Hermon, a couple of hours after the terrible battle was over. He was said to be one of the heroes of the battle, relentlessly charging the Syrians till the Golani flag was raised over the place. “Why did I charge?” he repeated the reporter's question. “Because we were told that the Hermon Mount is the eyes of Israel!”

T
he Hermon post was a fort on top of Mount Hermon, bristling with antennae, radar sensors, bowl-shaped dishes and listening devices, and manned by Golani Brigade soldiers. Not far from it, across the border, the Syrians had erected their own post. The Israeli fort had been captured by the Syrians at the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. The battle had been lost within two hours, with thirteen Israeli soldiers killed and thirty-one taken captive. The post, dominating
the Syrian plains and laden with electronic equipment, was of crucial importance for Israel. The intelligence gathered by its sensors and antennae was priceless. Two days later, a Golani elite unit had attempted to retake the Hermon but they, too, had been defeated, losing another twenty-five fighters.

Golani's wounded pride had led their commander Amir Drori to request of the Northern District chief of staff: “Save the Hermon for me for next time!”

The next time arrived thirteen days later, on the sixteenth day of the war, October 21. General Hofi, a former deputy of Sharon's at the Mitla battle and now the commander of the Northern District, decided to exploit the window of opportunity before the declaration of cease-fire by embarking on an operation to simultaneously capture both the Israeli and Syrian posts on the Hermon. The plan went as follows: Sayeret Matkal, under the command of Major Yoni Netanyahu, would take position as a barrier between the two posts; a paratrooper brigade would seize the Syrian post and the Hermon peak. The Golani Brigade, commanded by Colonel Drori, would recapture the Israeli post.

The troops were weary after two weeks of fighting, yet the mission had to be carried out. The offensive was set for 6:00
P.M
. Starting at two, Sikorsky helicopters transported 626 paratroopers from two reduced battalions, an engineering unit and a heavy mortar detail, to the departure point for the seizure of the Syrian post, located 7,812 feet above sea level. The Syrians noticed the paratroopers' airlift and dispatched 24 MiG-21s and five helicopters with commando troops against them, but IAF planes downed 10 MiGs and 2 helicopters.

The paratroopers' first objective was the capture of the Pitulim post, located at a critical junction between the roads to the mountain peak and the Syrian Hermon post. As they crossed the road to the junction, they took enemy fire and an officer was killed. Despite continuous shooting, the fighters charged the Syrian force, wiping it out. They continued their advance and three hours later reached the Syrian Hermon post. They clashed with the Syrian soldiers; twelve Syrians were killed and the rest retreated. The paratroopers crossed the fences surrounding
the post, entered and discovered that it had been abandoned. The Syrian soldiers had opted to flee. Six trucks full of soldiers were immediately sent as reinforcements by the Syrian command and were hit by the paratroopers. At 3:25
A.M
., the paratroopers' commander reported to his superiors that the Syrian post on the Hermon was in the IDF's hands.

But the main operation was recapturing the Hermon's Israeli post. It turned out to be much bloodier and more complicated. It would extract a heavy price in Golani blood, with fifty killed and eighty wounded.

Before they left for battle, one of the company commanders, First Lieutenant Yigal Passo, spoke to his soldiers: “Take care of yourselves; I need you whole. Work slowly, and use your heads. I don't want pointless charges and acts of heroism; we'll kill them one by one.” Passo himself was killed hours later, during the punishing fight for Hill 16, part of the capture of the Israeli Hermon post.

Golani's soldiers ascended the mountain in three prongs. The main force was from the 51st Battalion, which started climbing on foot and was supposed to reach an elevation of 5,295 feet. The ascent was very difficult, lasting seven hours before they arrived, close to midnight, at a site nicknamed Tanks' Curve. The climb was quiet—so quiet that some believed the seizure would be smooth and easy, that the Syrians had already fled, that everything would soon be over. Just 2,600 feet separated them from the post, and nothing suggested that they were marching toward a firetrap. The IDF artillery blasted every hill on their way before they approached, but as the shells were falling too close to the advancing soldiers, the Golani commander instructed the artillery to skip a couple of hills. So it turned out that Hill 16 was spared by the Israeli cannon.

But on Hill 16, a large Syrian unit was hiding in fourteen trenches, as well as between the surrounding boulders. Golani's fighters knew nothing of what awaited them.

At 2:00
A.M
., a fighter marching before the troops at Tanks' Curve heard noises. He crouched down and then, between the boulders, discerned the shape of a soldier who was wrapped in a blanket and wearing a stocking cap. The Syrian soldier, no less surprised, raised his head and asked, in Arabic, “Who are you?” The Israeli didn't hesitate, pulling his
weapon out first and killing him. In response, gunfire came in on all sides, and on the radio, shouts of “Encounter!” broke out.

A brutal battle ensued. The Syrians, using MAG-58 machine guns plundered from Israel, shot with great accuracy at the Golani fighters on the mountainside, causing many casualties. Another Golani company also encountered Syrian troops, and during its charge, its fighters and their commanders were wounded.

David Tzarfati, a Golani fighter, later remembered: “From two-thirty, Hill Sixteen became another world. I heard screams of terror, shouting, crying, howling, like at a massacre. I told myself, ‘This is it. No one can hear me now. This isn't a joke—it's death.' I disconnected from everyone and got my head down on the ground, hard.”

The heroes of the Hermon—“the cannibals, the phalanges, the Indians . . .”

(Zeev Spektor GPO)

The deadly battle continued, with gunfire raining down on the hills from every direction. In the chaos and uncertainty over which positions were occupied by Israeli forces, artillery fire landed very close to IDF soldiers fighting on Hill 16. As shrapnel fell on the battalion commander
and his aides, he radioed for a halt to the gunfire and ordered to use warning shots to ascertain where each unit was positioned, and only then to start shooting again. After a check, the batteries were ready to resume the gunfire, but an artillery-coordination officer, liaising between the units, was shot, along with his radio, and the artillery fire was held up.

Motti Levy, a Golani fighter, recalled, “The hill became a jungle: I can hear the screams of soldiers who've been wounded. I can hear my friend Hassan staggering on the mountain like a sleepwalker, yelling, ‘Mother! I'm dead! Dead!' Eighty percent of the company is in critical condition; five meters above me I hear battle cries in Arabic. It's an awful situation.”

At three, Brigade Commander Drori arrived at the site of battle with his staff and said to the soldiers, “Hold your positions. Reinforcements will be here soon.” David Tzarfati shouted back, “We need to pull back! We need to pull back! There are many dead, many wounded!”

The brigade commander replied, “Quiet, soldier. Backup is coming. Maintain position.”

At four, the brigade's reconnaissance company advanced toward the Hermon's upper cable-car station. Its members didn't know the size of the Syrian force opposing them. En route, Company Commander Vinick wanted to examine the roadway leading to Tanks' Curve, in preparation for joining the battle and assisting the 51st Battalion. While he was advancing along the road, Syrian soldiers concealed in a trench fired a continuous salvo at him. He managed to shoot several bullets before falling, drenched in blood. A signaler and a medic who tried to reach him were also shot and wounded.

As the battle claimed more and more casualties, the commanders of the Northern District instructed the paratroopers to prepare to complete the assignment given to Golani. After several minutes, the operation's commander instructed the paratroopers to descend from the Hermon Syrian post and assist Golani. The promise made to Golani that it would recapture the Israeli Hermon post was thus annulled. But Golani continued fighting.

At four-fifty, A Company found itself in battle on Hill 17. The fighters
had prepared to charge but didn't realize they were about to attack a major Syrian formation comprising a considerable force, entrenched in thirty-five positions. The company began moving northward along a secondary incline, falling directly into a Syrian trap. Sixteen fighters were killed, and the company commander was fatally wounded, dying two weeks later in the hospital.

At five-fifteen, Brigade Commander Drori was wounded too; the 51st Battalion commander, Yehuda Peled, replaced him, but he also was wounded a few minutes later. Major Yoav Golan, the brigade operations officer, took over. Golan had been wounded at the Suez Canal, and by the time the Syrians captured the Hermon he had already been recognized as disabled by the IDF. Yet, he was fighting together with his comrades. He sent into battle a mechanized company and decided to activate heavy artillery on the Hermon post and on Hill 17, where Syrian commando forces had entrenched themselves. All that time the Golani fighters did not budge from the positions they had acquired for so much blood; two-thirds of the fighters had been killed or wounded. Benny Massas, one of the battle heroes, felt he and his comrades preferred to die on the mountain than to go back without conquering the post.

But the Syrians were first to break down. The artillery onslaught and the Golani desperately clinging to their positions determined the battle's outcome. At eight-fifteen, the Syrians began fleeing the battle zone. En route to the post, Golani fighters eliminated another ten Syrian commandos, and twenty were taken captive. Israeli soldiers entered the post with great caution, fearing that the site had been booby-trapped.

At ten-fifty, Yoav Golan radioed, “The post is in my hands! The Israeli Hermon post is in our hands! We're up there now, combing the site.”

Minutes later, one of Golani's officers announced on the brigade's communication network, “All network stations throughout the world! The flag has been raised!”

Indeed, the flags of Golani and Israel were hoisted, following a bloody battle that had extracted a terrible price. Benny Massas and his comrades had recovered “the eyes of Israel.”

A soldier named Alaluf summed up the fighting: “Who recaptured
the Hermon? The brigade commander, Amir Drori? During the first wave, he got wounded and was down on the ground. The battalion commander? During the second round of gunfire, he fell, too. I'm not angry at them. They were my officers. But it was Yigal Passo and his ordinary soldiers who captured it. I, Motti Levy, Tzarfati, Eddie Nisim, Dahari, Azout, Blutstein: the so-called Cannibals, the Phalanges, the Indians.”

   
GOLANI FIGHTER DAVID TZARFATI

          
“It was a hard, blood-soaked battle. I didn't think I'd survive. I had a sense that I belonged to the dead, that I would soon join them. . . . After the massive shelling, I lay down, unable to move or react. I was in a state of waking sleep, not wanting to live. . . . I was cut off from everything surrounding me, as if I were in a bubble.

              
“There's one moment that follows you your entire life—it's the truest, strongest moment, which gave me the strength to go on living, to continue functioning. . . . It was at eight
A.M
. as I was still lying down, useless, and my company commander, Yigal Passo, lay dying, after he was hit at four in the morning, and, in a weak voice, he tells me, ‘David, you'll be the representative of those who died. You'll tell everyone about this battle.' And then he asked me to cover him, got up and, with his final bit of energy, started running toward the Syrian positions. Even in his final moments, he continued fighting. At the end of the battle, we evacuated those killed, and Yigal Passo's corpse was among them.”