The Silver Platter of the Yom Kippur War

The Silver Platter of the Yom Kippur War By Zvi Harel | Israel Today | 09.18.2018 Dressed in battle gear, dirty, shoes heavy with grime, they ascend the path quietly. To change garb, to wipe their brow they have not yet found time. Still bone weary from days and from nights in the field. From: The Silver Platter A Poem by Natan Alterman Written towards the end of 1947, a few weeks after the outbreak of the War of Independence. * * * It would hardly be possible to relate the terrible story of the October 1973 Yom Kippur War – especially the dramatic turn of events that literally saved the State of Israel – without putting the 14th Brigade front and center. This standing armored brigade, under the command of Col. Amnon Reshef, played a critical role that merits greater attention. When the war broke out, the 14th was the only tank brigade defending the 200 kilometer long Suez Canal front. The strongholds along the canal were manned at the time by reservists from the 16th Jerusalem brigade along with soldiers from the Nahal brigade. As a result the 14th was virtually alone, holding the line against wave after wave of a massive Egyptian military crossing of 90,000 infantry soldiers and 820 tanks within the first 18 hours of the war on October 6th. The 14th brigade continued to play a critical – and heroic – role throughout the war. It took part in stopping the Egyptian armored assault on October 14th; crossing the Suez Canal (Operation Stouthearted Men), breaking through the Egyptian deployment in the deadly battle of the “Chinese farm” (October 15th and 16th); and then battled on to the gates of Ismailiyah. The 14th brigade took heavy casualties in these bitter engagements, losing 302 of its men, with hundreds of others injured. 82 were killed on the first day of battle alone. Another 121 lost their lives in breaking through Egyptian lines at the Chinese farm. Damaged tanks at the Battle of the Chinese Farm. Reshef was given command of the brigade about a year before the Yom Kippur War. On the eve of battle, the 14th numbered almost 1,000 soldiers. Two battalions with 56 tanks were under Reshef’s command and a third, deployed in the northern sector of the canal, was under the command of the 275th brigade. Reshef had previously led the 52nd battalion and the 189th reconnaissance battalion. He received his first battle experience as a company commander during a 1959 raid on a fortification in the Golan Heights, carried out jointly with a force from the Golani brigade. During the Six Day War he served as intelligence officer and Deputy Commander of the 8th brigade, where he fought both in the Sinai and the Golan. Six months after the Yom Kippur War he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General and appointed Deputy Commander of the IDF armored division. In 1979 Reshef was given command of the IDF armored corps and raised to the rank of Major General. He retired from active duty in 1984. In 2014 he founded Commanders for Israel’s Security, bringing together hundreds of former senior commanders from all branches of Israel’s security forces (the IDF, Mossad, Israel Security Agency and Police). Reshef, who chairs the movement, opposes the annexation of Judea and Samaria, warning that Israel will be burdened with responsibility for the civilian population there. Reshef argues that the soldiers from his brigade never received due credit for putting their lives on the line during the Yom Kippur War. Even an official IDF study was riddled with factual errors on this point. Protesting these inaccuracies, Reshef convinced IDF authorities not to publish it. To set the record straight, Reshef conducted his own, painstaking research, reviewing untold quantities of documentation in the process. The resulting, 640 page book, We Will Never Cease!, was published five years ago (Kinneret Zmora-Bitan, Dvir publishers). He dedicated the book to the fighters of the 14th brigade, to those who gave their lives and their families. We Will Never Cease! is meticulously documented. Reshef consulted the brigade’s sources, including aerial photographs, eyewitness accounts of commanders, front line soldiers, men who served in the canal strongholds and Israeli POWs; transcripts of radio communication, captured enemy documents, and transcripts of the commission of inquiry headed by Justice Shimon Agranat, -- a commission in front of which Reshef testified twice (four hours each). Now, 45 years after the war, Reshef agreed to an interview with Israel Today, sharing not only details of what happened on the battlefield but also his insights as he reflects on those momentous events. I listened to his riveting story for hours on end. Reshef told me about his struggle to survive the blood drenched battles of the Yom Kippur War, as bullets, tank shells and Sagger missiles shrieked overhead. His performance won him the admiration, not only of his own men but of his commanding officers. Thus, for instance, Major General Yisrael Tal, Deputy Chief of Staff during the war, says “Amnon’s experience was unique. I don’t know of another commander anywhere who went through what he did that night.” Reshef is a tall fellow (1.9 meters). Heis speaks with a calm voice and displays a phenomenal memory. “I didn’t think I’d make it,” he tells me as he describes an operation to rescue fighters trapped in the Purkan stronghold. “I was ready to pay the price. Maybe it was the sight of so many dead and injured. I really thought I was next.” After the fighting had ended, Reshef often looked back wondering what gave him the strength to battle on in the face of death. The answer, he concludes, begins with a less than easy childhood, mired by his mother’s death when he was only 13. Mentally Unprepared Reshef, a father of five and grandfather to 16, was born in Haifa 80 years ago. His parents made Aliyah from Hungary in the 1920’s. Before Hebraizing it, his family’s name was Izaak. “When I was a year and a half old,” he relates, “we moved to Tel Aviv. The family was poor. The four of us – my parents, my younger brother and myself -- lived in a one room, cellar apartment. My father was a tailor and our home was his workshop. But despite the scarcity, we were happy. We lacked for nothing.” Reshef’s family was traditional. “Mainly because of my mother,” he relates. “We kept a kosher kitchen and I usually covered my head – not with a kippah, but with a beret. I sang in a children’s’ choir that performed in synagogues around Tel Aviv. “ Reshef studied in the Tel Nordau elementary school. At the end of WWII, his mother’s nephew -- a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp -- came to stay with them. The family came up with a creative housing solution for him, placing a basic metal bed on the balcony and enclosing it with wooden boards. Five months later, after the uncle found his own apartment, two of his sisters – Auschwitz survivors as well – came to Israel, taking his place on the balcony. “We honestly didn’t feel crowded,” Reshef recalls. When he reached the age of 13, the family moved to a two room apartment in Bat Yam – near the sand dunes, a kilometer outside the town’s built up area, adjacent to the industrial zone. As a youth, Reshef worked in the nearby popsicle factory. After his mother died, his brother was sent to a kibbutz and then to a boarding school. Reshef stayed at home. In light of the financial situation, Reshef was advised to study at the Shevach trade school. His mother’s death was very hard on his father. She had been the dominant figure in the family. Reshef lasted only a year at school. At 15 Reshef began working full time to support the family. He remembers working at a milling machine in a dark cubicle in Jaffa. “It wasn’t easy for a child to travel each morning to work in Jaffa and come back at 5 in the evening. Our apartment had no hot water. We used primitive methods to heat up water when we needed it.” The turning point came at age 16, when Reshef decided to go back to school. He registered to study mechanical metalwork at the Max Fein School in the afternoon, while continuing to work full time, starting his day at 5:00 am. He maintained this exhausting routine until he was drafted into the army on the eve of the Sinai campaign, in August 1956. Why did you chose to serve in the armored corps? Reshef: You’ll have to ask the folks who sent me. I actually wanted to be a pilot, but I failed the vision exam at the Tel Nof base. The tank commander’s course attracted young people from all over – city kids and kibbutzniks – from well to do families. I personally didn’t choose tanks. In fact, I wasn’t an outstanding trainee. They just sent me to the armored corps training base and decided that I’d be an instructor. As the years went by, Reshef never gave up hope of continuing his education. He wanted to complete his matriculation. Army officials made all kinds of promises, from a degree at the Technion to studying in the US. But in the end, they never came through, appealing instead to his sense of duty. Reshef blames the commanders of the armored corps, including Yisrael Tal and Avraham Adan, who failed to make good on their promises.

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