Yoni's Last Battle by Iddo Netanyahu

Author:Iddo Netanyahu
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 965-229-283-4
Publisher: Gefen Publishing House

Chapter V

Other people’s stories join my own memories. They settle together into my mind — not in a jumble but in a line, each memory leading to the next, forming the road to Yoni’s death at Entebbe.

It’s been 16 years since the Yom Kippur War, and my friend from my days in the Unit has a hard time finding the exact spot where the battle took place. We drive a bit north from Nafah, toward Wast Junction. The road rises and falls, and each time we drop into a depression, we lose sight of the surrounding plateau with its low stone walls. On an uphill stretch, before we get to the top, he says: “Here’s the place.” We stop and get out.

“The Syrian commandos were scattered here, to the left of the road,” he explains. “The helicopters that had brought them had already flown back to the east.” Yoni’s force had been assigned to defend the main military headquarters on the Golan Heights, at Nafah, and one of his teams had spotted the helicopters landing. As soon as he received the report, he gave the order to get in the halftracks — the Syrian force couldn’t be given time to get organized. Within minutes, everyone who had managed to grab a place on the half-tracks, about 40 men, had left. Heading in the general direction of where the commandos had landed, they passed a force from the Golani infantry brigade that had already exchanged fire with the Syrians and sustained casualties. Yoni was unable to get a clear picture from them of precisely where the Syrians were, and he advanced a little further. He stopped the half-tracks where we’d just stopped the car, and the men climbed out.

I remember a description I heard years before from Shai Avital, a young officer in the Unit at the time of the battle, of how it began: “Suddenly, they opened up with pretty heavy fire, while we were still standing out in the open next to the half-tracks. Luckily, we crouched and the shells and bullets flew over us. But one of the officers was hit, and he died later of his wounds.”33

So this is where Gideon Avidov, my team-mate from the service who went on to be a squad-commander, got hit, I note to myself, here on the road, just as he began combing the area for the Syrians. Says my friend: “We pulled him back to that little ditch by the side of the road, to the right, and we started treating his wounds. You have to understand that some of the Syrians were already firing from behind that wall, the close one.” I look to my left, and see a long stone wall a few yards off, parallel to the road. “The Syrians were positioned on the ground just beyond it.”

Shai was among those who advanced on the wall after the first burst of fire. As he told how it happened: “The Syrians had us where they wanted us — they had cover, and we were still out in the open, unprotected… It could have been really bad.

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