The Valley Of Tears: Israel's Last Stand At Golan Heights | Greatest Tank Battles | War Stories

The Golan Heights in 1973 This rocky terrain on the border between Israel and Syria becomes an extermination camp. The Golan Heights are Syrian territory and Syria cannot, will not, accept a few hundred unprepared Israeli

tank

ers coming face to face with 1,200 Syrian

tank

s. What I see from the horizon. towards the horizon the entire syrian army begins to cross in front of me this was a fight without limits neither side backed down the

golan

heights

1200 square kilometers of the most disputed real estate on the planet it is hell the

golan

heights

1200 kilometers squares of the most disputed real estate on the planet, it is an arid volcanic escarpment that has been occupied by Israel since the six-day Arab-Israeli war of 1967.

Both Israel and Syria claimed it as their own in the fall of 1973, that border dispute erupts into sudden fierce and bloody war October 6 is Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, most Israelis are at home repenting of their sins and observing a fast as they leave the Syrian border lightly guarded commander of the 74th

israel

i tank battalion, lieutenant colonel yar nafshi begins a routine patrol, it was just pastoral peace and i am patrolling the positions along my front at 12, a commander from the hermann post calls me and says, yair, The Syrians are removing the camouflage nets from their artillery and then I act instinctively.

I turn my jeep and I gather all my men and I say look, the scenario is that the Syrian army is removing their camouflage screens, I don't know what this means and the men stopped assembling their tanks and started preparing them and while we are leaving of the batches the bombardment begins the artillery lands on us then the Syrian air force planes attack the Syrians have been planning the attack for nine months Israeli intelligence had some clues but for the men on the front it is a complete surprise what these Syrians What we do is lull Israel into a false sense of security.

The Israelis have seen the Syrians move all their troops and prepare for war over and over again only to have them all return to their bases, and so on October 6, when the Syrians withdraw. Do not return to your bases, the Israelis are completely unprepared. Israel is a small state. They have perfected the art of mobilization, so it is in the first shots of the war where you want to achieve everything possible to not bring the bulk of the Israeli army against you. Most of the Israeli forces are reservists who need 20 hours to fully mobilized, therefore the Israeli forces in the Golan Heights consist of less than 6,000 light infantry, 60 artillery pieces and two low-power armored brigades with 170 tanks, in comparison the Syrians have concentrated more than 50 thousand infantry six hundred pieces of artillery and twelve hundred main battle tanks this is an enormous amount of armor beyond it was yom kippur in

israel

people were on vacation the intelligence services were in israel There were deficiencies that the arabs cannot combat and as a result they They brought a big surprise.

I thought what's going on, what are those pilots, what crazy bits are they doing and I thought this is Israeli by mistake, they're boring. We didn't realize that any plane from Syria can cross the border and arrest the boss and I couldn't. Five minutes in I'm finally on the edge of the reinforcing ridge seeing more than half of the Golan Heights. At first it's small and then I eat it. rings of cigarette smoke are getting closer and closer everything I see from horizon to horizon the entire Syrian army begins to cross in front of me but this is just part of a much larger war Egypt and Syria have launched simultaneous attacks on two fronts dividing Israel defense forces in their mission to recapture territory lost during the six-day Arab-Israeli war, including the Sinai and the Golan Heights, the Syrian body politic was humiliated and traumatized, it is as a result of this we had the war of 1973, a war that was done specifically to recover this territory that Israel occupied over time, they developed a campaign plan that was designed specifically to retake the golan and repair the tarnished honor of syria the plan Syrian battle is to use overwhelming force and penetrate the Israeli line at two points then send armored divisions through the gaps to advance across the Golan Plateau and seize key bridges over the Jordan River.

At the spearhead of the Syrian attack are masses of the Soviet-designed T-55 tank. The T-55, at 40 tons, is relatively small for a main battle tank which makes it difficult to hit its 100 millimeter main gun. It has an effective range of only 2,400 meters and is no match for the Israelis' largest guns, but That disadvantage is offset by numbers: the Syrians attacked the Golan Heights with more than 1,200 t-55. The defending Israelis with their 170 tanks are outnumbered almost seven to one. The Syrians have rehearsed the initial attack on Israeli positions countless times. beforehand but apparently one thing they had not planned properly was where to place the bridging equipment.

The Israelis had built a deep anti-tank trench in front of their positions along the Golan front, but the Syrians had placed their bridging equipment far back in their columns and as a result, the first thing that happened was that there were Syrian tankers that strangely headed straight towards the tank ditch. The Israelis went straight into the tank ditch and as a result, they were eliminated as easy targets by the Israeli tankers sitting on the heights. that dominate this anti-tank trench. For the Israelis, the tank of choice in the rocky terrain of the Golan is the shot cow.

An upgraded version of a Centurion main battle tank, it is protected by 152 millimeters of frontal armor and equipped with a 105-millimeter rifled gun with an accuracy of over 3,600 meters. The shot cow is a formidable opponent for the Syrian T-55s when David comes out. To fight Goliath he made the decision to fight him with a slingshot and he knew that he could defeat Goliath because he would not enter the range of Goliath's weapons and from outside that range he hits him with a stone and knocks him down. I know David, the Syrians do not open fire from distances greater than 2200 meters, but I use all my training.

I can shoot and hit targets at about five kilometers. The Israelis understood that in the Middle East terrain, where there were often very long fields of fire. Being able to kill the other guy before he could kill you was a tremendous advantage, so the Israelis had put tremendous effort into developing long-range artillery skills. When the initial Syrian attack in the north failed, the commanders decided that, anyway, they would do it. They tried to mount some kind of night operation to see if they couldn't get back on schedule and that's why they advanced in the dark. At that time they had a tremendous advantage.

The Syrian tanks had Soviet night combat equipment. The Israelis didn't and as a result, when the Syrians They began to advance towards their lines, the Israelis did not know what to do or how to do it. The hardest combat was during the night, it was dark and no one used any lights when you turned on the light. ability to actually kill you the main problem is that during the night they had infrared systems the syrian infrared projectors allowed the t-55 to see through the darkness detecting targets at a distance of up to 1200 meters it is a great advantage for the syrians the only defense that the Israelis have are night vision binoculars that can detect the infrared ray one situation I was looking to identify them and I moved my face down and I saw all the parts of my tank I was surprised what was done I lowered my binocular suits I put it back on my face, I see every part and I found the 200 meters in front of me, a projector looks directly into my eyes with an infrared system and he identified me, he was ready to shoot, I shout to my driver, go away and we back off, we accept. the direction from which they came just to give them the feeling that we are there waiting for them they did not know that we are blind the Syrians infiltrate Israeli positions during the night and the line between the two tank armies becomes more and more blurred my situation I saw a tank next to my tank and a 10 meter tank looks strange and the brake lights come on he was near my tank he said there is a 10 meter girl use the light and show me who is this tank I didn't want first , of course, and I convinced him, I ordered him and he turned on the lights and I saw the 55.

I was shocked, of course, I shot him at the moment he was on fire. I saw that another attack was for him. After 18 hours of almost continuous combat, the tankers. of the Israeli 77th and 74th battalions have held the line in the northern Golan Heights and have paid a terrible price: hundreds of dead and wounded and 75 of their tanks destroyed, but for the Syrians the price is even greater: casualties are counted By the thousands and more than 100 tanks have been lost, but in the open terrain further south, the Syrian offensive has been much more successful. They have annihilated an entire tank in order to advance towards the land of Israeli art.

Of course, he was as elated as all Arabs to see the images. of syria advancing on the golan heights the future not only of israel but of the entire middle east is now at stake october 6, 1973 egypt and syria attack israeli forces on two fronts are determined to recover all the territory they lost in the Six-Day War of 1967. Syrian armored brigades attack two points in the Golan Heights, throwing 50,000 infantry and 1,200 tanks into battle in the rugged, mountainous northern sector. The Israeli defenders hold the line during the first day of fighting despite being outnumbered almost seven to one and suffering heavy casualties, but in the more open countryside further south the Syrians seem unstoppable.

In the south you have two very aggressive Syrian commanders who dragged their bridge team forward. One of their commanders actually had his infantry fill parts of the Israeli anti-tank trenches they crossed by hand and were able to build up so much power against these weakened Israeli defenses on the southern flank of the golock that they were able to break through on October 7 after a day of fierce fight against the Israeli south. The line crumbles under a massive attack by Syrian armor at 8 am. Syrian forces are advancing across the Golan Plateau heading toward key bridges spanning the Jordan River.

The Syrian assumption was that if they could get through those Israeli lines and drive as fast as they could. Those bridges could effectively prevent Israeli reserves from mounting a viable counterattack from the Galilee. At two o'clock, when the alarm sounded, I immediately opened the radio and heard the BBC announcing that the war had started in Israel. The armed forces' battle continues in the Golan Heights as Syrian armor has been trying to break through the Israeli line and, according to news here, has been held back by Israeli tanks and artillery. I called my unit uh at the door and they told me they would come right away. there is water the water was empty I drove like hell and the feeling was that we were caught by dakotas and the people in 73 the tanks were empty of ammunition and equipment we had to load them with shells and take all the equipment out of storage and organized again, if you have the entire call, which is four members, must do so.

It takes four to six hours to really prepare it properly, but during the peak time we didn't really prepare the tanks properly, they all went to the Golan. The heights no matter how many tanks you had, whether the tanks were fully equipped or not, they were just gone. Syrian intelligence estimates that it will take Israel 20 hours to mobilize its tank reserves, but the Israelis do it in ten hours throughout the night. Israeli reservists break through. To the battlefield they hurriedly organized into units and launched the fight against the Syrians in the early hours of October 7 the first tanks arrived at the Golan Heights early in the morning we advanced towards the enemy who was already inside the heights of the golan don was starting to break up and saw a lot of tanks, some kind of mask fell off, now we have to do what is necessary, we don't think about it too much, we open fire on them, but directional alignments are required to match the cannon of the cannon with the telescope cross but we did not do this due to our hasty departure we did not hit them it is possible to make alignments in battle time but this is much less accurate but it is better than nothing we hit some tanks but not long after this I saw a large cloud of dust coming from the southeast and when this cloud approached it turned out to be a very large Syrian force with T-62 tanks.

It's the

last

thing the outnumbered Israelis want to see on the battlefield. 62 is an improved version of a t-55; Those upgrades include 240 millimeters of frontal armor and a larger 581-horsepower engine, but the biggest threat is the T-62's 115-millimeter Molot main gun. Its smoothbore design increases the speed ofexit, giving it a range of Almost 3,000 meters and then honestly I started to feel like they were aiming at me and I was getting chills next to me or behind me and if the first one is long the next projectile will be short and then the next one will be will hit.

We started the battle with maybe five or six tanks against this large Syrian force, the only thing left to do was try to fight a stalemate battle, but they just pushed us back. It is overwhelming, four Syrian brigades, 350 tanks break through the Israeli defenders and advance towards the bridges over the Jordan River, before nightfall, both run into very small groups of Israeli infantry and, although at this moment they are only a couple of kilometers from their objectives, both brigade commanders decide to stop for the night and with almost nothing in their hands. The way the bridges were there they were theirs for the Syrians taken when they woke up the next morning to find strong Israeli forces guarding those two bridges.

My battalion met them on the road from the Batega Valley to the Golan Heights. The first tanks in our column did not see them, only the

last

tank saw them and they began to shoot and yelled at him, why are you shooting, we are in our territory, we say that they are Syrians, here we did not believe that they arrived so far west, the problem was that the T-55 They only have five degrees of degradation that means the cannon can' Not aiming very far is a disadvantage for a tank on higher ground facing an enemy approaching from below, even though Israeli cows have a high degree of elevation, which makes it easier to hit targets above them, they had to expose themselves if they wanted to.

They have enough degradation to shoot us, so when they expose themselves, we shoot them and that way we manage to stop them. The real problem was simply that Syrian junior officers allowed the small Israeli forces to completely derail the only thing that could have really ensured victory for Syria, the drive to seize the Jordan River bridges, which the Israeli reserves of the 39th Battalion stopped. to the Syrian 1st Armored Division on the Pattaya road, but further south, the Syrian offensive remains unopposed as 40 tanks of the 132nd Mechanized Brigade advanced towards the small village of El Al Anneem. receives orders to ascend to the hou and seal what is known as the l out position, it is a position between two deep canyons about two kilometers wide.

Whoever owns it and successfully maintains the position controls all the roots to the sea of ​​galilee around nine o'clock. On the dot, through my binoculars I begin to identify what we in armor call dust masses, this means that you can see the dust clouds long before you hear the noise and through the binoculars I noticed some movement from a distance of about four kilometers. that movement in the distance is an entire brigade of Syrian tanks their mission is to occupy the western edge of the Golan Heights overlooking the Sea of ​​Galilee from here the plains of Israel are almost defenseless and at the mercy of the Syrian advance if they are successful and pass us , the Syrians will be in the Sea of ​​Galilee and I under

stand

that a loss or even a withdrawal is not mine alone, it would be fatal October 7, 1973, 20 hours have passed since the Syrian attack on the Golan Heights occupied by Israel and in the rugged and rocky northern sector, two Israeli territories fight to keep the Syrians at bay, but on the flatter terrain of the South Golan, masses of Syrian armor have rolled on these rails and are advancing towards the bridges over the Jordan River around the nine o'clock.

With my binoculars I begin to identify which wing on the armor they call dust masses, this forward movement becomes increasingly clear and then we begin to identify Syrian tanks approaching and stopping at distances of about 1500 meters and we begin to notice many attacks. on the al plateau it is absolutely flat it is as if they put the tanks on a pool table and said please go ahead and play now you can see enormous distances there is nowhere to hide and the only thing that can save you is your own ability your own ability and always be on the move I always make sure that the tanks are always on the move and do not shoot more than what is called a ball at the target, which is just two or three shells, one after the other, we shoot one and then we adjust shoot another and then move to another position to hit a target, you would have to stop and

stand

, then you take the turret to a point where it is aligned with the enemy tank, you give it the range according to your estimate when everyone announces When I gave the order to fire, the The Israelis, for their part, maneuvered constantly, darting from one firing position to another, most of the Syrian armored units did not maneuver at all, they just headed straight for the Israelis, so this is really the big difference between the Syrians. and the Israeli armies, the Syrian ones, when they gained the territory, they hold on to it until death, which could be good, but it is very bad if you need to maneuver.

The simple fact is that Syrian tankers are no match for the Israeli counterparts that the Israelis have taken over. the best shots Syria has to give and now they are in a position with enough combat strength to be able to start retreating, so we started moving unit by unit and I found myself alone in wamtania, there were two eels and I was in the crib, You know, from the ears that dominate a town, I saw a regime receiving fuel or rearming, etc. and I started shooting at them and I saw some Syrian tanks coming out of the hills and I started eating them one by one because they were spreading one and next to each other very very close, the Syrian tanks are easy targets for the Israelis, the high explosives crush the head or the hesh round upon impact, they smash against the target and explode creating a shock wave that destroys the inside of the tank, I believe.

They destroyed something like seven tanks before they started moving and, understanding that someone was shooting at them, fired back. Our tank began to buckle as we evacuated from the tank after a few meters without the moment the tank exploded, the outnumbered Israelis retreated and regrouped and the Syrians prepared for a final major offensive late in the afternoon of the 8th. October. They have assembled a full armored division with more than 250 tanks in Bushnia, a small village in the southern Golan that is about to become ground zero for one of the largest tank

battles

. It was once a thriving village in the Highlands. of the Southern Golan, today it is a scattered collection of ruins, a grim monument to the ferocity of the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.

Syrian and Israeli tank forces clashed here in a historic encounter now simply remembered as the Battle from hosnia october 9 the syrian advance towards the golan loses strength and they assemble an armored division of more than 250 tanks in buschnia in preparation for a final major offensive, but in the three days since the syrian attacks on the heights of the Golan The Israelis have mobilized hundreds of tanks and thousands of reserve soldiers, most of them heading towards Hosnia for a confrontation with the Syrians. I received the order to cross the pipeline and advance and capture hashnia. The Syrians kept this place as their last stronghold in the Golan Heights and for the first time since the war began there was a plan for an organized attack with artillery and cats.

The artillery began to fall on Hashnia and we in two tank squadrons began to advance crossing the territory from the oil line towards the town of hashnia at dusk the last light and you can see the entire town burning exploding and the mask of hashnia in the middle of all this we advanced with the tanks and the syrians did not escape us but it is dangerous because everything explodes and crystallizes around us it's dante it's inconceivable it's hell and then Syrian tanks and trucks come out from inside the village and they are terrified trying to escape and I see a Syrian tank and it's not clear if it's able to get out but then his turret starts moving in my direction but my cannon and turret are further away and it's completely clear that I won't be able to aim at him, he will first make an offer for me and if he does, then there's a gunman behind me, there's one of my battalion officers and launches a projectile and the Syrian fan turns on are manifestations difficult to describe but the Syrians ran for their lives the Israeli reserves destroyed more than 200 tanks stopping the great Syrian advance on the afternoon of October 9 the Israelis have retaken most of the southern Golan but on the northern front they are still struggling to contain Syrian forces in a place that will soon be known as the Valley of Tears in the north.

The remnants of the elite 7th Armored Brigade are barely holding back the Syrian 7th Infantry Division. The Syrians tried for the last time to destroy the Israeli positions, they have 200 tanks, half of them T-62 and the Israelis have been reduced to less than 30 centurions who are currently located in the positions that control the

valley

of

tears

that we see here in front of us and when I arrive from booster ridge with six tanks I realize that I am not going to reach these positions, which are the best and govern the entire width of the Valley of Tears, and unit 7 has retreated and I find myself alone with six tanks and I decide to make a defensive position in the reverse and I stop the six tanks and distribute them along the rear slope of the hill that is located behind us and I see the smoke from the exhaust of the Syrian tanks on the hill, you see to those who move. on the other side of the hill you take those three you these two you these three and I let the Syrians pass just over the hill.

I let the Syrians advance and they head towards the top of the hill with the barrels of their cannons pointed upward. and I wait for you, the metal opens at point-blank range around 300 to 400 meters, but in this battle, after stopping the Syrian army, we only had two tanks left on this side, at the foot of Mount Hormon, where today we see the same

valley

famous where The colonel commander of the 77th battalion stood and blocked the Syrian advance when I reached two kilometers from the hills, I saw in the distance Israeli tanks on fire and other tanks around him, he was soon attacked and I moved with my tanks towards Valley.

I was in shock. call my commander, he said if you have any junction areas send them immediately October 9, 1973, Israeli and Syrian tank forces have been fighting in the Golan Heights for three days with heavy casualties on both sides, the Syrians overcome in numbers to the Israelis and quickly gain the upper hand, but the Israelis retreat with their reserve forces. Now time is running out for the Syrian army. They make a last attempt to break through the Israeli defenses in the north. They throw an entire armored division into battle. They have 200 tanks, half of them T-62s and the Israelis have been reduced to less than 30 centurions the main forces are just behind the hill if they reach the top of the hills no one can stop them they will run to the gallery and I have decided to continue Go ahead and take the hills and trap them in the valley is a desperate tactic and the only chance the Israelis have is to recover their firing positions and to do so they have to cross 800 meters of open terrain in the middle of Syrian fire to advance. as it was written in the book and I have decided to move them all to my frequency to my radio, every player, loader driver and tank commander surgeon, listen to my body and told them to look at the Syrian soldiers, how they are fighting so well. in them the motivation of what happened to us and my sea chicken in my unit began to move and I began to move I saw something else join me and apart from joining me and I ask God to let me get to the top of the hill and we will catch them and suddenly other tanks come to the hills like crazy at the moment we have been in the firing position and they move in the valley, this was easier for us to shoot, I fought to survive, some of them stopped and they shot and killed my tanks, we survived about three four times, remember that I tried to count the tank we shot at everywhere and I couldn't count that many after the battle, Israeli observers counted 500 Syrian tanks destroyed in that gorge and as a result , it was called the valley of

tears

because all the Syrians killed them.

Syria's hope to retake the Golan Heights ends in the Valley of Tears. On October 11, the Israelis launch their own offensive in Syria and on the 23rd, the Syrians capitulate the battle. because the Golan Heights were finally over, this was simply competent Israeli commanders thinking about going out to fight their Syrian opponents, but there is no doubt that the Syrians fought incredibly hard, mounting attack after attack after attack against the ferocious Israeli defenses, in many cases died for a man this was a fight without limits neither side retreated the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 lasts only 16 days but those days are among the bloodiest in the history of armored warfare the battlefields are filled with the destroyed tank hulls.

The Israelis lose between four and five hundred, the two Arab countries, between twelve and two thousand two hundred, but the real tragedy is in the human cost forboth sides. 21,000 dead and tens of thousands more injured. Most of my friends, I lost their walls, they were 19. 20 years old no more than that and I saw them how they are and how they fight and it is incredible and I was very proud that the war ended with disappointment but ended with a solemn promise from the Syrians and two Syrians and of the Syrians that they would do it. take back the Golan Heights one day if the Golan Heights are not returned to Syria, I dare say there will be no peace in the Middle East.