Avigdor Kahalani

A very personal account of the trauma that was Israel's battle for survival in the surprise Yom-Kippur attack by the Egyptian-Syrian alliance in 1973. Kahalani was a Tank Corps battalion commander in the Golan Heights. This memoir tells what it was like for this young man with such massive responsibility for the defence of Israel's north. His famous 7th Armoured Brigade was instrumental in the critical defeat of the vastly more numerous Syrian armour.

As the brief but extremely intense October War continued, the author recounts how his unit initially survived and ultimately helped to win Israel's last truly existential war. This is a very powerful eye-witness recollection of a young, yet senior field officer at the heart of the biggest battle on the northern front. Kahalani was 29 then, and would go on to become a General and later a moderately successful centrist politician. It is not a comprehensive history of the Yom Kippur War, others do that better, but it is probably the best account of tank battles from that conflict by a commander in the field who was there. Well worth reading.… (más)