Up in armor, 43 years on

Driving toward the Arik Bridge, the memories came flooding back. The view was amazing, with the blue shimmer of the Sea of Galilee on the right, and the Golan Heights straight ahead, draped with the yellow shades of summer and dotted with the green of trees and the white of their communities' homes. Back then, some 43 years ago, driving up to the Golan Heights on the exact same road, clouds of black smoke billowed up into the sky, and the thunder of cannons echoed through the air.

This is the Yehudiya route: Here, on the left, behind a fold in the ground, was the position of the first battery of the 313th Battalion's Soltam M-66 -- motorized heavy 160-mm mortar shell launchers, when they first entered the 1973 Yom Kippur War. This was where they were first hit by anti-battery fire, and where one of the officers was wounded.

Ahead of the fold in the ground, there were trees. There, I remember, were the carcasses of burned tanks, ours and the Syrians -- the Syrians so close to Jordan that had they traveled for a few minutes more, they could have been on our side of the Jordan Rift Valley, near our communities. Then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan called that scenario "the destruction of the third Temple."

The only thing standing between the Syrian tanks and our communities were a handful of regular army forces and the reserves, with us among them. But mostly the Armored Corps.

This time of year, ahead of Yom Kippur, the memories come back for those of my generation. For anyone who was there, on the Golan Heights and on the southern front, along the Suez Canal and in Sinai. Post-trauma? Not necessarily. Just a feeling, and knowing that what happened 43 years ago -- the war -- was a transformative experience for that generation. And what followed was different from anything that came before.

This time, I traveled up the Yehudiya route to observe an exercise preformed by the 7th Brigade's 82nd Battalion, courtesy of Armor Corps Commander Brig. Gen. Guy Hasson and the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, and to try to understand what has changed in the military's perception, battle doctrine, the tanks, and the men.

I was observing the new, but haunted by the old. Across from the entrance to the 7th Brigade's base stands the monument for the brigade's fallen soldiers. The training area we were heading to is crossed by the so-called "petroleum road," the same one we traveled on then, en route to Quneitra, ahead of breaching Syrian territory. The hills making up the Golan Heights drew closer, each hill with its own battle story.

I have a soft spot for the 7th Brigade. Who can forget the Battle of the Valley of Tears, waged by the 77th Battalion under the command of then-Lt. Col. Avigdor Kahalani, a hero of Israel, in the northern sector of the Golan Heights. I will never forget how I was sent, alongside two other Armored Corps officers, to undergo additional commando training. At the time, the Armored Corps sought to set up its own commando units, one for every artillery brigade, and it wanted to learn from the best.

I met the best of the best in that training course. Twenty Armored Corps cadets -- happy, cheerful and professional. For two months we navigated across the country, with jeeps, maps and humor to spare. During the war, many of them were in the 7th Brigade's reconnaissance units. In the northern Golan Heights, the brigade fought a heroic battle opposite a Syrian ambush. Their armored personnel carriers were torn apart by anti-tank fire. Company Commander Uri Karshani was killed, as were others.

I will never forget 7th Brigade Commander Avigdor Ben-Gal, then a colonel and later a major general. We were in Syrian territory, in the village of Jaba, over which Tel Shaar looms. As we were deploying in the village, Ben-Gal drove up in a half-track personnel carrier, holding a combat helmet, his hair blowing in the wind and his soot-covered face smiling. He exchanged brief words with some of the soldiers and then drove up the hill, where the commanding officers had set up their post. They were surprised to see an Iraqi division, bolstered by a Jordanian brigade, storm in from the south, artillery fire raining on the hill -- on us -- almost immediately.

But I will never forget Ben-Gal's smile, just like I will never forget how Rafael Eitan, then the commander of the regular armored division and later IDF chief of staff, was standing in one of the junctions, his clothes covered in soot and dust, tipping his broad-brimmed Australian Barmah hat and smiling as the troops drove by.

All these memories, and many more, were with me 43 years later, when I observed the 82nd Battalion's exercise, trying to understand the Armored Corps in 2016.

A luxury four-wheel drive

The Merkava Mark IV tank is the main weapon used by the 82nd Battalion, the 7th Brigade, and essentially by all regular units, spearheading the Armored Corps. I have seen this tank and rode in it, and it is, in a word, amazing.

Modern warfare, Hasson explained, "is no longer about tank versus tank. Nowadays, tanks are designed to address the various threats in their environment, including anti-tank cells, terrorists -- a whole range of threats."

The Merkava Mark IV is the most advanced and sophisticated Merkava model, which includes the Trophy system, also known as "Windbreaker," an advanced anti-tank missile defense system the Armored Corps needed so badly during the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

The Merkava 4, as it is commonly known, weighs some 70 tons, but gallops forward with the ease of a luxury four-wheel drive. The external design is diagonal and is meant to increase the tank's defenses, as diagonal armor creates a deeper protective layer than vertical armor, and a larger armor envelopes its gun turret. The real magic, however, lies with its systems -- Windbreaker, the smoke screen system, and electronic systems and digital systems. Inside the tank, they form lines of monitor, displaying sights, maps, night vision capabilities, peripheral cameras and computers.

"The tank collects information about any potential threat in its environment," Hasson explained. "It's a network -- the tanks feed each other information, detect threats on the ground and destroy them specifically."

The Merkava 4 is armed with a 120 mm gun, an upgrade from the 105 mm guns mounted on IDF tanks for years. New and advanced munitions were developed for it, meant to address the threat of infantry forces equipped with anti-tank missiles.

"There is more to the tank than its gun," Hasson said. The Merkava 4 gathers intelligence; it is better protected than ever before; and it has two sights, allowing it to engage one target while locking onto the next. Simply put, this tank is as close as it can be to a fighter jet. It has certainly come a long way from the tanks used 43 years ago, not to mention the Sherman tanks used in World War II, which were used by the 4th Reserves Division to fight Syrian tanks in 1973.

The Merkava 4 is only part of the change. Today's tank battalion extends beyond tanks and has an auxiliary unit, comprising 120 mm mortars, reconnaissance and lookout companies. This has allowed the battalion to become an integrated force, bolstered by infantry and artillery. Forty-three years ago, the mortars were under the Artillery Corps' command, but today they are under the Armored Corps, providing on-site, effective countermeasures. Today's mortar systems are online, computerized and networked, linking everyone through the computer, and assisted by drones that hover above and provide intelligence.

"I don’t see the Iraqi division from your story coming up here again," 7th Brigade Commander Col. Dan Neumann, said."Today's threat is different."

Standing atop a hill, we watch the battalion exercise: Mortars are fired at the direction of a suspected enemy position -- missile-armed infantry. Remote artillery fire follows, and the tanks advance. They slow down and stop, then advance and stop again, making their way to the target. They stop and fire, then carefully, safely, advance again.

Safety first

When the tank was first invented, during World War I, it was designed to assist infantry forces by breaching the barbed wire fences of the western front. It was only later that commanders and theorists recognized its potential as a weapon to charge, flank and deliver a decisive result. A "turbulent river of armor," it was called, and it lived up to the name during World War II, in armor-to-armor battles, such as the 1943 Battle of Kursk between German and Soviet forces on the Eastern Front, or the Normandy campaign in 1944.

In Israel, the tank lived up to its reputation during the 1956 Suez Crisis, and the 1967 Six-Day War. "Armor is the ground forces' decisive element on the battlefield," Gen. Haim Laskov, one of the forefathers of Israel's Armored Crops and the fifth IDF chief of staff, explained back in 1956. During the Yom Kippur War, armored forces encountered anti-tank missiles for the first time, and since then considerable resources have been dedicated to developing defense systems. No longer will they simply charge forward, cavalry-style. Now, the crew's safety comes first.

In 1968, historian Shabtai Teveth published his book "The Tanks of Tammuz," an account of Israel's Armored Corps during the 1967 war. Crews in the Merkava 4 are no longer exposed to the dangers depicted in the book, as its offensive and defensive systems allow them to fight from within the tank, especially given that, compared to its predecessors, the Merkava 4 is relatively spacious.

So where is the Israeli Armor Corps heading? Former corps commander Brig. Gen. (ret.) Avigdor Klein said the Merkava 4 "was designed to meet low-velocity conflicts as well," meaning the tank is an integral part in an entire array of countermeasures, not only pertaining to armor-to-armor combats, but also with regard to the nature of conflicts presented by the current security reality: opposite terrorists, in routine security operations, and perhaps even in some urban warfare situations.

Hasson, who was a battalion commander during Operation Protective Edge, is proud of the fact that none of the soldiers serving with 7th Brigade were killed during the 2014 Gaza conflict, especially given the firepower used. And that, he stressed, was a low-velocity conflict, adding the brigade will know how to handle future conflicts, be they similar to the last Gaza campaign, or a wide-scale ground maneuver, the likes of which a potential third Lebanon war might demand.

A bond like no other

The confidence stems from the fact that the advanced weapons the 7th Brigade has at its disposal include a very special addition -- the men.

"There's a special esprit de corps among those serving in the 7th Brigade, and everyone are in tune with the myth," Neumann said.

"There's something special about serving in the Armored Corps," Hasson added, namely the special bond between the tank's four crewmen.

The tank experience, you see, is a unique one.

"Perhaps under no other circumstances do men, from different backgrounds, areas of interest and diverse education, live together in such close contact. ... Each man drawing a measure of strength and courage from the character of the others, each man giving something of himself to create the spirit of the whole team," author Cyril Joly described his crew in his book "Take These Men (Echoes of War)," which depicts tank battles in the Western Desert during World War II, and was one of many books to inspire the Israeli Armored Corps.

Speaking with Sgt. Tal Styer, the commander of the tank I was in which I was riding, I couldn’t help but admire the professionalism, resolve and humility shown by this young man. He has been training with this tank for a year, and he is still familiarizing himself with it.

And yes -- he has seen the 2014 film "Fury," about a tank crew in World War II. Yes, the first part is scary, he says, but overall it is a good movie that teaches you about life as a team inside the belly of a tank.

Styer's crew are consummate professionals; the salt of the earth, as is mortar unit commander Lt. Avihu Hajbi, who may not be a tank crew member, but is a proud Armored soldier through and through. Hajbi is proud of the advanced instruments he is entrusted with, in his men, the battalion and the brigade. When I turn his attention to the fact that his mortar launcher has no sights, he laughs. "You mean a collimator [the bright stripe running through the old sight]? There's no need," he explains to the old-timer before him. "We have a computer."

This is the new reality. I came from an old-school army. This army is different, having leaped generations forward.

I visited the 7th Brigade in the Golan Heights. It is better equipped than we could ever had hoped to be 43 years ago, and it still embodies the same spirit -- to charge, defend and win. An old Israeli song about the Armored Corps says the "tanks set out on screeching chains." Today's chains do not screech as loudly, and the men are just as good.

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