Forgotten heroes of the Yom Kippur War

The 1973 Yom Kippur War is known for many things: The surprise attack, the gruesome fighting, the camaraderie forged on smoke and blood-drenched battlefields, and Israel's stunning victory over its enemies. But the heroic tales of the war are missing one important story -- the story of the 71st Armored Battalion, which was formed just 36 hours before the war, and was all but obliterated by the time the roar of the artillery faded.

Six of the soldiers who served with the 71st Battalion, and took part in the containment efforts against Syria on the northern border, have recently come together to tell their unit's forgotten story. Thinking back on the inferno of the war, their lost comrades, and the physical and emotional scars they carry, they ask for only one thing -- historical justice. It is time the 71st Battalion was recognized for its bravery and sacrifice, they say.

The war is vivid in the memories of Benny Baratz, 63, a commercial attorney from Tel Aviv, who served as the unit's operations officer; Amir Naor, 61, a former tank commander and retired career officer from Savion; Shai Cantor, 61, a real estate agent from Karmei Yosef, who served as the deputy commander's tank driver; Professor Ami Fishman, head of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba and a former tank commander; Nissim Alfiyah, 62, from Caesarea, an information systems executive and the unit's former communications officer; and Yossi Berman, 63, from Modiin, an executive at an office supplies company, who served as the unit commander's tank driver.

They speak of the war as if it happened yesterday, not 42 years ago, and the occasional "remember when…" traded between them meets the same answer over and over again -- "How can I forget."

From euphoria to inferno

The 71st Battalion was a flash formation, put together less than two days before Israel was attacked. Originally meant to be embedded with the Israel Defense Force's 7th Armored Division, the battalion comprised Armored Corps Training School officers and cadets, Bahad 1 Officers Training School cadets, and training officers stationed at the southern Tze'elim Army Base.

Dozens of regular army servicemen were scrambled to the northern front; strangers, lacking the proper equipment and ammunition, who fought shoulder to shoulder in two of the bloodiest battles in the IDF's history: the battle for Mount Hermon, and the Valley of Tears battle.

After four days of fighting, the 71st Battalion was all but gone: Only six of its 31-strong tank force had survived. Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Meshulam Retes and his deputy, Maj. Gideon Weiler, were killed within seven hours of each other and dozens of soldiers were wounded.

Only 10 soldiers killed during the war were officially named as 71st Battalion fatalities. Wartime chaos saw many fatalities mistakenly affiliated with other units, and the surviving few were reassigned to other divisions for the duration of the war.

"We were young and we had no idea what we were in for. No one said anything about 'war.' There were 'tensions.' It was supposed to be a day or two, no more. We were so naïve," Cantor recalled.

"The 71st Battalion may have been short-lived but it was not short on heroism," Baratz said. "The unit was dispersed on Tuesday, Oct. 9, at 10 a.m., merely five and a half days after it was formed, but in its short life it was equal to all the other units that prevented the Syrians from overrunning Israel."

The battalion first encountered the Syrian's "warm" welcome at its gathering station, set up on a lot near Ha'emir Junction -- then Waset Junction -- on Route 959 in northern Israel.

"It was 1:55 p.m. and we were just getting ready for roll call, when all of a sudden it was raining MiG and Sukhoi [jet] fire. The entire area was filled with smoke and dust, and we ran to our tanks. I was 21 years old at the time, and the only war I had ever seen was in the movies. There were bombs falling on us, like it was World War II. That's the first image etched in my mind," Naor recalled.

Fortunately, the attack left little damage in its wake, and once it was over the freshly minted battalion made its way east, to the Israel-Syria border. En route they witnessed an Israeli fighter jet take direct Syrian fire and crash to the ground.

"It happened right before our eyes," Naor said. "At first I thought it was a Syrian jet, but when we got closer we saw the Star of David on one of the wings. We were shocked. All of a sudden we weren't the automatic victors of the Six-Day War."

The battalion came under Syrian fire less than an hour later.

"We saw huge Syrian convoys -- trucks, armored personnel carrier, tanks, and pounder guns heading toward the Israeli border. At that point, the Syrians believed they could just cross the border; that we wouldn't put up a fight," Baratz said.

"We fired at them from close range until it was dark. Fired and hit. Fired and destroyed. I don't know how many," Alfiyah said.

"I was a little euphoric at that time, it seemed like all you had to do was just point and shoot," Naor recalled. "I also experienced a miracle: I had just taken out a T-62 tank, and I was adjusting my position, when something hit my shoulder. A split-second later I realized it was a Sagger [missile] wire. That guided missile missed my head by only a few inches."

The euphoria soon faded. The battle intensified, and the battalion, which was significantly outnumbered, found itself face-to-face with swarms of Syrian troops, who stormed the Israeli forces relentlessly.

"They outnumbered us 10 to one when it came to tanks, and that gap just kept getting wider," Cantor recalled. "It was like a tsunami. The Syrians deployed insane amounts of armored and commando [troops] out there."

Fishman noted the Israeli troops were both sleep and food deprived, and Naor added they could hear the Israeli tanks' crews over the radio, reporting they were out of munitions.

"I remember hearing one of the crews reporting they had no firing pin. Can you imagine? They're facing a Syrian tank and they can't fire their shells. The Saggers were wreaking havoc all around us, and the Syrian artillery didn't let up for one second," Naor said.

The Syrians, the six said, demonstrated formidable fighting capabilities on the ground.

"They knew what they were doing and they obviously had solid intelligence. My guess is they were listening to IDF radio frequencies," Alfiyah said.

"The sheer number of Israeli tanks they destroyed proves they knew what they were doing," Cantor noted. "Don't forget, they were pummeling the 188th Armored Brigade at the same time."

Hours under fire

The fog of war and the darkness of night lent themselves to chilling incidents, the six said.

"At a certain point, I realized one of the tanks next to us was firing in the wrong direction," Naor recalled. "I remember thinking, 'Who's the idiot firing in this direction-' I switched on a pocket flashlight and to my horror there was a Syrian tank just five yards away from us, firing on our troops.

"I gave my gunner an order to aim to the right, but -- Murphy's law -- the electrical system failed. I told him to adjust the gun manually, but the mechanism jammed. At that point I slid down, and whispered to him, 'Listen, there's a Syrian tank to our right. I just used my flashlight to find it, so it knows where we are. Train the gun on it now or we're all dead.'

"I climbed back up to the turret, and I could see the Syrian tank was starting to train its gun on us. I told the gunner to shoot, but he said he couldn't see at what. Apparently, we were so close [to the Syrian tank] all the gunner could see through his sights was a big black mass. After a few seconds that felt like an eternity, we managed to fire a shell, and the Syrian tank just lit up in flames. I don't even want to think about what would have happened had it shot first," Naor said.

The battlefield was so crowded the tanks were practically nose-to-nose, Cantor noted, "and you couldn't improve your position even if you wanted to. It made it easier for the Syrians to train their sights on us after every shell we fired. The pressure was terrible. We destroyed many Syrian tanks, but they destroyed many of ours, as well."

The battalion withstood enemy fire for hours, fighting both the Syrians and the declining morale.

The troops suffered a serious blow on the night between Oct. 8 and Oct. 9, when two of the battalion's tanks were ambushed east of Buqata, a Druze town in the northern Golan Heights, and all contact with them was lost.

Despite the darkness and the fact the area was crawling with Syrian commandos, Retes and Weiler decided to send three tanks, under Weiler's command, on a search and rescue mission. Within 30 minutes of their departure, however, a nightmare scenario had realized, and the battalion lost contact with the rescue mission as well.

"We immediately understood something had gone terribly wrong and we were completely in the dark, literally," Baratz recalled.

"I remember Retes trying to get through to Weiler on the radio over and over again, and getting no reply. We waited until dawn and we set out to look for the lost tanks. We came under fire en route, and one missile narrowly missed us. When we approach the ambush site we could see the tanks.

"I got out of my tank and walked over, to see of anyone was still alive, but all I found were bodies. The deputy commander's tank was hit badly, and Weiler was lying not far from it, dead. He was thrown out of the turret and broke his neck when he hit the ground," he said.

"I kept looking around, and all of a sudden I realized the periscope on the deputy commander's tank was moving. I rushed over, climbed in and yelled it was the Israeli forces, and I found Shai, huddled in fear. We were under hellish Syrian fire so we got out of there as fast as we could. We were hit by two missiles on the way back," Baratz said.

Cantor shudders at the memory. "When we left to look for the two ambushed tanks, Weiler asked us to be careful, to be especially vigilant. Things started out well and we even helped a damaged tank improve its position so it wouldn't be a sitting duck for the Syrians. We were heading [to the ambush site] when all of a sudden the tank shook violently. There was a loud 'boom' and I was sure we hit a landmine. I asked Weiler, on the radio, what happened, but he didn't answer. I called out to the gunner -- nothing. I had no idea where I was, and it was pitch black and terribly quiet inside the tank.

"I kept thinking, 'What am I supposed to do now-' and I made a decision that ended up saving my life -- I turned off all of the tank's systems and the engine, essentially creating a situation where only the tank's outer steel shell protected be from the Syrian artillery fire, which was incessant. I knew the Syrian infantry would be waiting for me if I got out, so I decided to play dead.

"The one thing I was scared of at the time was being captured," Cantor continued. "I had read books about Syrian prisons, and all I could think was, 'Dear God, please don't let them pull me out of the tank.' I waited like that for hours, huddled in the driver's hatch, counting the seconds and the minutes. We were hit around 2 a.m., and the rescue arrived around 5 a.m. when it was daylight."

When he finally heard voices outside the crippled tank, Cantor said he could not decide what to do. "I had no idea if they were Syrians or not. To give any sign of life under such circumstances is practically suicide. I didn't recognize the sound of our tanks, but from what little I could see through the periscope, their color was the IDF's, so I decided to take my chances and moved the periscope. Next thing I knew, Benny came in and got me out."

That was a debilitating day for the 71st Battalion. "We had lost five tanks and we had little munitions and little fuel left. We realized we were running out of time," Baratz said.

"I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said we all aged about 10 years that day," Berman said.

"At least," Alfiyah echoed.

The final blow

The battalion had little time to recover from the harrowing experience, when its six remaining tanks were ordered to join the 77th Battalion in what would later become one of the war's seminal events -- the Valley of Tears battle.

Arriving at the valley, the troops encountered a massive Syrian force, and according to Baratz, "It was a textbook clash, just like they taught us in [Armored Corps Training] school. You take your tank up a mound, see the target, fire, and drive down quickly, to the next mound, and so on and so forth."

Some of the Syrian tanks, Naor added, "Were driving right below us and we couldn't see them. They would just pop up in front of us. You had to deliver a direct blow to tanks racing toward you, or you would be the one getting hit. That sums up the battle -- it was all about who could take down who first."

Shortly after the 71st Battalion engaged the enemy in the Valley of Tears it sustained a blow that even now, 40 years later, its surviving members describe as "the moment it was all over."

The battalion commander's tank, leading the charge, sustained a direct missile hit and Retes was killed. Baratz, who as operations officer was in the same tank, was thrown out on impact, and sustained injuries to his hands and face. The rest of the crew was wounded as well, and the Israeli tanks in the immediate vicinity broke to the sides to improve their positions.

"A few moments before we were hit we took out a Syrian tank. We shot it while we were in motion, and it was so close that its fragments hit my periscope," Berman, who drove Retes' tank, recalled.

"When we got hit I knew it was serious. I had experience with some near-misses, and this was different. My periscope shattered and I couldn't see anything. There was complete silence inside the tank and no one came in on the radio.

"There's a set procedure for such incidents that every tank crewman knows -- double back as quickly as possible. The logic is that if you got hit the enemy has you in its sites, and another artillery shell is likely coming your way," he explained.

"I instinctively doubled back, zigzagging in reverse. I was later told that I somehow knew to drive around the burning Syrian tank we hit two minutes before getting hit ourselves. After a few hundred yards I stopped and looked up to the commander's seat. It was clear Retes was dead, but I decided to get him to the wounded [soldiers' evacuation] point anyway. Another tank that drove by reported that the other wounded soldiers were evacuated as well."

Alfiyah, who was assigned to Retes' tank, credits his late commander with saving his life.

"It was a miracle I escaped that incident. Five minutes before the tank was hit, Retes ordered me off it, to evacuate a wounded soldier by jeep. I was driving back toward the tank when Amir radioed me that it was hit and Retes had been killed. At the time they said Benny was also killed. We didn't know he'd been injured."

"Rumors of my death even reached my mother," Baratz recalled, "but she decided that I wasn't dead until the military officially informed her I had been killed."

Retes' death marked the end of the 71st Battalion. The IDF dispersed the unit, embedding its surviving members with other battalions: Baratz was hospitalized and underwent a series of facial reconstruction surgeries; Naor was reassigned to the 77th Battalion and continued fighting in the war; Cantor, who was wounded, left the hospital against medical advice, and joined IDF forces fighting in Quneitra, on the Israel-Syria border; Fishman was reassigned to the 188th Brigade; Alfiyah fought in the ranks of the 7th Armored Division; and Berman, who was wounded, underwent minor surgery and was later reassigned as well.

"It's a miracle we're all still here. It could have easily been much, much worse," Alfiyah said.

A blaze of no glory

It is still unclear exactly how many men the 71st Battalion lost during the Yom Kippur War, or what has become of the dozens of soldiers missing from its records.

"The battalion was administratively disorganized and the IDF has yet to solve this riddle," Baratz explained. "So far, we have been able to locate 80 soldiers, apart from the official fatalities, but we are still 50 names short. We would welcome any information that could help us solve this puzzle."

Some monuments honoring soldiers who were killed while serving in the ranks of the 7th Armored Division name 71st Battalion fatalities, and it is mentioned in several books detailing the events of the war, but the six feel the battalion's contribution has been grossly marginalized.

The time has come to shine a light on the 71st Battalion's heroism, they said.

"When an entire battalion is all but obliterated, its commander and deputy commander killed in battle, the junior officers wounded, and only a handful of soldiers remain, it automatically disappears from the historical account of the war. It makes witnessing the glorified post-war accounts very difficult," Baratz explained.

Alfiyah noted that in other units, "Commanders and soldiers recommended each other for citations and medals, and rightfully so, but for us, other than Retes, who was awarded the Medal of Courage posthumously, there were no medals, despite the fact that some battles the unit fought made anyone who participated in them worthy of one."

The 71st Battalion deserves to have its story told," Naor said. "There is complete disregard for its actions. I would say we were forgotten. I feel that we've been wronged."

Still, the six say they are not envious of the fame and recognition garnered by the 77th Battalion for many of the same battles in which the 71st Battalion participated.

"The 7th Armored Division, the 188th Brigade, and the 77th Battalion fought fiercely and heroically and they deserve their fame," Fishman stated. "They were creative and charismatic and they had every right to take center stage. All we're saying is that we were part of it too, and our story has gone untold for decades."

The 71st Battalion, Berman added, "Fell through the cracks. It had no 'parents,' it was like a stepchild."

All six adamantly dismiss the notion of a potential cover-up. "Heaven forbid," they said in unison, adding the historical omission was the product of the chaotic circumstances on the ground.

Winds of change

Now, it seems, change is in the air, and historical justice may soon follow. Eighteen months ago, the 71st Battalion -- now a regular army unit with the 188th Armored Brigade -- founded a special heritage room, which tells the story of the battles of 1973, and Baratz and Naor have been invited to lecture before young Armored Corps servicemen about their time with the battalion.

"I'm delighted that a new generation is learning the historical truth. We fought like lions when we were significantly outnumbered by the enemy, and we helped other units," Naor said.

The six believe the newfound interest in the near-forgotten unit began two years ago, with the 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, which inspired what Cantor called "an obsession with every aspect of the war. There's a desire to learn new details. The 71st Battalion's former commander Lt. Col. Nir, and its current commander Lt. Col. Barak, have both promoted this issue, and we're grateful for that."

The battalion's surviving members plan to hold a special gathering on Oct. 14, in Latrun, west of Jerusalem. Some 80 veterans and their families, including Retes' widow, are scheduled to attend.

"We're very excited. Some of those who are attending the gathering haven't seen each other since the war. Many people will want to share their stories, pour their heart out, find missing pieces of their personal puzzle," Cantor said.

"People kept silent for decades. They preferred to forget, not to dredge up old memories," Fishman added.

"One thing is sure," Berman, concluded, "from now on no one will forget what the 71st Battalion did during the Yom Kippur War."