Yom Kippur War, 50th Anniversary, Remembering the Carnage of Armor

A Syrian Tank in the Golan, 1973

On 2pm on October 6, 1973, near the end of the Yom Kippur fast by Jews, Egypt and Syria, backed by auxilliary soldiers from many Arab nations, attacked Israel.  It was a surprise attack with devastating Israeli losses of 2,521 killed and more than 8,000 wounded.  

This week I learned that in addition to the soldiers from Arab countries who went to Egypt and Syria to fight, Cuba sent 500 tank commanders to the Syrian Army. These tank commanders led crews that fought in The Valley of Tears near Mount Bental in the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria.  

In the battle, 160 Israeli tanks stopped the advance of 1,500 Syrian  tanks. The Syrian tanks had to funnel through a narrow valley. At the end of the battle 153 of the Israeli tanks were damaged or destroyed. Nearly all the Israeli casualties in the battle were tank crewmen. Only seven Israeli tanks survived the fight. 

The Syrians lost more than 600 tanks with many more damaged. Thousands of armor crewmen in these Soviet-built tanks were killed and wounded. Of the Cuban tank commanders, 188 were killed, 250 were wounded. Just 62 went back to Cuba uninjured after the war. 

In June of 1975, I re-enlisted in the Army and went to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for Armor School.  The 1973 Yom Kippur War informed a lot of what we learned about tank tactics and about the short, violent life of tank crews in war. For instance, we were given the breakdown of casualties among Israeli tank crewman in the Yom Kippur War. 

Tank Commander 60%

Gunner 25% 

Loader 10%

Driver 5%

Tank commanders, according to the reports, "suffered fatal head injuries and hideous face and neck wounds." They had their hatch open and heads out to see the fight. Which helps to explain why almost 90% of the Cubans were killed or injured fighting on the losing side of one of the biggest tank battles in history. 

Within three days, the Israel Defense Force rallied and launched counter attacks against the invading armies.  By October 25, the IDF was shelling Damascus and was less than 60 miles from Cairo. 

In 19 days there was a cease fire and the war ended.  From the Sinai desert where the Egyptian Army invaded and retreated, to the Golan Heights where the Syrian columns began their invasion, the border areas of Israel were littered with the wreckage of tanks.   

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen: Book 13 of 2022

 

There are many Leonard Cohens. All of them occupied the same body born September 21, 1934, in Quebec, Canada, that passed away on November 7, 2016, at the age of 82 in Los Angeles.  He first aspired to be a novelist in his 20s; became a rock star in 1967 at age 33; gave up his career as a rock musician and went to Greece in 1973; went to Israel in October 1973 at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War and spent the next two months in a jeep entertaining troops near the front lines of that very bloody war.

Cohen is a Jew. Like many Jews he has a sometimes tense relationship with his Jewishness. And those struggles pervade Book of Mercy, a little book of contemporary psalms: praise, anguish, pleading and anger poured on the altar of the Temple that is Leonard Cohen's heart.  

Over the past few months, I read a psalm or two then put the book down, the way I read King David's psalms. For me, reading more than two at a time erases the mysteries I should be open to. 

Here is a man arguing with God and all who are of his faith and land:

Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation - none of these lands is yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy.--27

In another he is a worshipper, a son of the Most High:

My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terrors for one who remembers the name.--31

And this:

Like an unborn infant swimming to be born, like a woman counting breath in the spasms of labor, I yearn for you. Like a fish pulled to the minnow, the angler to the point of line and water, I am fixed in a strict demand, O king of absolute unity.--29

In 1984, the same year this book was published, the year Cohen turned forty, he recorded his most famous song for the first time "Hallelujah." 

Twenty years later, Cohen, like Job of the Bible, would find all of his wealth gone. (Cohen's fortune was stolen by his long-time manager; Job's fortune, family and everything was taken by Satan with divine Okay.)  He went on tour in his early 70s finding devoted fans and great success all over the world and, like Job, had what was lost restored. 

In addition the tours and new songs, Cohen wrote poetry in his later years published shortly after his death.  That book "The Flame" will be my next volume of Cohen's poetry. In a couple of years I hope to re-read the Book of Mercy. 

First twelve books of 2022:

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

Soviet Armor vs. American Armor, Israel 1973

In July and August 1975, I went to the U.S. Army Armor School in Fort Knox, Kentucky, after three years in missile weapons testing.

We learned the basics of armor and about our tank, the M60A1.  We also learned about a serious flaw in our tanks that was fixed at great cost by the Israeli Army.  The Israelis fought and defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan using the M60A1 among other tanks.  It turns out the hydraulic fluid in our tanks was prone to catch fire.  After the Israelis lost crewmen to these fires, the hydraulic fluid was changed.

We also learned how important mechanical reliability is to combat tank crews.  The Arab countries used Soviet tanks, primarily the T-55 and T-62 main battle tanks.  We learned the difference between "live" and "dead" track.  Soviet tanks used dead track, like bulldozers that does not use rubber bushings.  In hard use, especially at high speeds, dead track is more prone to break.  According to one report, the Syrian Army lost one-fourth of its tanks before they reached the battle in the Golan Heights due to automotive failure.

After the 1973 War, the Israelis installed American-made drive lines in captured Soviet tanks to make the Soviet armor more reliable.

To people who have never trained and lived in a tank, they can seem like the indestructible behemoths of movies.  But real life in a tank is a life of wrenches and rags.  As a tank commander of one of the most reliable tanks of its time, my crew and I spent five hours or more maintaining our 54-ton tank for every hour of operation.  Each of the 80 track blocks on each track were held together with a center guide and two end connectors.  Each of the 160 center guides and 320 end connectors could work loose and had to be checked, often.  The center guides ran between six pairs of road wheels, three pairs of return rollers, the drive sprocket and front idler wheel for adjusting track tension.  Each of the wheels had inner steel plates bolted to the aluminum wheels.  The road wheels were attached to torsion bars.

We tightened bolts all the time.  Our tanks would received major service at 6,000 miles of operation, usually including a refurbished V12 diesel power plant and transmission.

And our tanks were so much more reliable than the Soviet counterparts that the Israelis ditched their drivelines and installed American-made drivelines to make the Soviet tanks more reliable.

War shows strengths and weaknesses.  Reliable, effective armor is definitely an American strength.