Valley of Tears

Valley of Tears is also the title of a popular song recorded in 1957 by Fats Domino .¹ The Valley of Tears battle The Valley of Tears ( , Emek HaBakha ) is the name given to an area in the Golan Heights after it became the site of a major battle in the 1973 Yom Kippur War , known as the Valley (or Vale) of Tears Battle .² Although massively outnumbered, the Israeli forces managed to hold their positions and on the fourth day of the battle the Syrians withdrew. Background The Golan Heights are made up of a 1240-square-kilometre volcanic (basalt) rock plateau perched above the Hula Valley and the Sea of Galilee to the west, the Yarmouk Valley to the south, and bordering on Mount Hermon to the north. Israel in the 1967 war had advanced against the routed Syrians until a defensible line was reached, a string of extinct volcano cones that commands strategic views of all northern Israel on one side and of Damascus on the other. The 1967 cease-fire line was known as the Purple Line , and marked the end of the no man's land separating Syria from the now Israeli-occupied part of the Golan, comprising the western two-thirds of the region. Lacking a true defensive barrier, the Israelis had dug a 32-kilometre-long anti-tank ditch along the border from Mount Hermon to Rafid , an obstacle Syrian armor would be forced to cross under fire from Israeli tanks positioned behind ramparts. Israeli defending forces The Golan Heights were defended by two IDF armored brigades: the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade , which had only been dispatched to the northern sector on October 4, and the 188th Barak Armored Brigade , a regular fixture intimately familiar with the area's terrain, in the south. The 7th Armored Brigade and the 188th Barak Armored Brigade were armed mainly with Israel's modified Centurion " Sho't Kal " tanks and a few modified M48 Patton " Magach " tanks. The modified Centurion and M-48 Patton tanks fielded by both brigades were fitted with the 105mm Royal Ordnance L7 gun and modern diesel engines. Syrian battle plan and forces The Syrian plan called for three mechanized infantry divisions (from north to south: 7th , 9th and 5th ), in BTR-50 armored personnel carriers (APCs) supported by 900 tanks, to breach the Israeli lines, opening the way for the 1st and 3rd armored divisions to move in with their 500 tanks to capture the entire Golan Heights before Israel had a chance to mobilize. When the battle began, approximately 400 of the Syrian tanks were T-62s , the most modern Soviet-bloc tank at the time, equipped with a 115mm smoothbore gun and infrared night-fighting capability . The balance were T-54s and T-55s armed with 100mm guns. The Syrian tanks would remain in formation for a few days and then return to base. Syrian attack On 6 October 1973 the Syrians launched simultaneous attacks in the north and the south and attacked the two Israeli brigades and eleven supporting artillery batteries with five divisions (the 7th, 9th and 5th, with the 1st and 3rd in reserve) and 188 batteries. They began their attack with an airstrike by about 100 aircraft and a 50-minute artillery barrage . The Syrian mechanized 7th Infantry Division attacked the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade in the northern area between Mount Hermonit and a southern ridge known as "Booster" in Israel, or Tel el Mekhafi in Arabic , a narrow front soon to be known as the "Valley of Tears". The Syrians started the offensive with mine-clearing tanks and bridge-layers leading the way to overcome the Israeli obstacles. They gained much ground at the start, but failed to move tanks across the anti-tank ditch. Only at night did they penetrate the Israeli defenses with the help of night vision equipment—equipment that the Israelis lacked. Initially, Israel was able to deploy only 176 tanks: Sho'ts and Magachs used by the Barak Brigade in the south and the 7th Armored Brigade in the north. The next day, the Syrians mounted a second attack, and at one point in the engagement less than forty Israeli tanks, of which the Barak Brigade only had 15 serviceable ones, were facing approximately 500 Syrian tanks. The Israeli 74th Tank Battalion, under the command of Lt.Col. Yair Nafshi , was moved to its battalion position 1.5 km forward from its previous defensive position, a maneuver that saved tanks from the Syrian artillery barrage. During the battle, Lieutenant Zvika Greengold , who had arrived unattached to any unit, fought off attacks with his single tank until help arrived. He was wounded and burned but stayed in action and repeatedly showed up at critical moments from an unexpected direction to change the course of a skirmish." The Syrian force split into a two-pronged advance. Colonel Tewfik Jehani's 1st Armored Division moved northward toward the Golan command headquarters of Maj. Rafael Eitan , situated at Nafekh on the road leading down to the Bnot Yaakov Bridge , over the Jordan River and into the Israeli hinterland. The second prong of the Syrian attack, spearheaded by the 46th Armored Brigade of the 5th Infantry Division, moved south from Rafid on the southern access road toward El Al , with units breaking off toward the north in the direction of the Arik Bridge at the northern tip of the Sea of Galilee. Every Israeli tank deployed on the Golan Heights was engaged during the initial attacks. Reservists were alerted and began to arrive at the scene and were sent to the front as soon as they arrived at army depots, without waiting for the crews they trained with to arrive, machine guns to be installed on the tanks, or taking the time to calibrate the tank guns (a time-consuming process known as bore-sighting ). The Syrians had expected it to take at least 24 hours for Israeli reserves to reach the front lines; in fact, reserve units began reaching the battle lines only 15 hours after the war began. Israeli reserve forces approaching the Golan Heights were subjected to Syrian artillery fire directed from Mount Hermon. On the second and third day, Syrian forces suffered heavy losses as Israeli tanks and infantry fought desperately to buy time for all the reserve forces to reach the front lines, and conducted stopgap blocking actions whenever the Syrians were on the verge of breaking through. However, the Syrians pressed the attack in spite of their losses, and the vastly outnumbered defenders lost numerous tanks. By the afternoon of October 9, the IDF's 7th Brigade was down to six tanks protecting what was for all intents and purposes a clear path into Israel's north. On the fourth day, the 7th Brigade received a small reinforcement force when it had less than a dozen operating tanks and was almost out of ammunition. The Syrians, exhausted from three days of continuous fighting and unaware of how close to victory they actually were, turned in retreat. Hundreds of destroyed tanks and APCs littering the valley below the Israeli ramparts were testimony to the horrible destruction that had taken place there. Within 5 days, the Syrians had lost almost 1,000 tanks. The Syrians retreated for reasons that are still debated.³