A Tale of Two Battle Fronts

To assess the war in the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, TIME correspondents joined Israeli troops on both fronts.

From the Golan Heights, William Marmon reported:

This area is a strategic imperative for both Israel and Syria. When Syria holds the Heights, it threatens the fertile Israeli settlements in the upper Galilee region. When the Israelis hold it, they have a flat, unimpeded access to Damascus, only 40 miles away. In this war, the Golan witnessed some of the bloodiest combat ever waged in the Middle East. When we drove our orange Volkswagen into the area, we at first passed the rusting tanks of the 1967 war. Soon we encountered freshly destroyed tanks, Syrian and Israeli.

Just south of the Syrian border, incoming shelling forced us to turn into a base that had been overrun by the Syrians on Yom Kippur and retaken later by Israel. Syrian artillery and tank fire had left gaping holes in the concrete barracks, where clothing, boots and Playboy foldouts lay under the debris. The hospital was filled with injured Israeli soldiers. Surviving members of the base's original defenders were returning, still stunned by the Syrian attack. One said: "I can't begin to absorb what I have seen." Another bitterly remarked: "Our government was idiotic not to attack first. We have suffered too much just to placate world opinion [by not launching a pre-emptive strike]."

The base synagogue had been desecrated by the Syrians on Yom Kippur. Torahs and prayer books were ripped apart and riddled by bullets. But the Israelis had already installed a new set of Torahs and were distributing leaflets from the chief military rabbi instructing them that on Thursday's and Friday's holiday of Sukkoth--a normally joyous celebration of a bountiful harvest--the soldiers were to pray for the army.

Despite the destruction and chaos, the Israelis seemed confident. The command post was re-established in a bunker, and fresh soldiers were pouring in. Golan Heights Commander Major General Yitzhak ("Khaka") Hofi assured us: "Our forces are essentially in a mopping-up operation. The Syrians committed their entire armored force. They wanted to take the Golan and move on to Haifa."

Hofi admitted that there was still some disarray remaining from the original retreat and that some soldiers had not yet found their units. While the ultimate strategy will be determined in Tel Aviv, Hofi insisted that, "we must bring them to a point which will not produce a cease-fire but a surrender." Air Force Major General Mordechai Hod agreed: "This time we must force them to the peace table. How much we will have to punish them to achieve this is unclear at this point."

Driving south to the Sinai along a road built before the Romans came to Egypt, we found virtually all traffic going one way--toward the Suez Canal. Among the endless convoys of military trucks and Jeeps were the motley fleets of civilian vehicles mobilized for the war. In the first days of the fighting, Tel Aviv had been nearly emptied of all taxis and trucks--and here in the desert you could see why. Private delivery vans, called up in the mobilization, were now at the front, still bearing the markings of the milk or bread companies that they served in peacetime.

Many Israeli soldiers joined their units after traveling either by taxi or by hitchhiking. At midweek, some of the men were still wearing half-civilian clothing. Their khaki shirts and jackets clashed sharply with their more stylish slacks and patterned socks. At villages along the road, groups of teen-agers --some of them Americans visiting Israel--had set up refreshment stands and were offering coffee to the troops.

As we arrived at a camp near the front, air-raid sirens suddenly wailed, and troops scrambled to the alert, grabbing for helmets and ducking for cover. The camp had been strafed by MIGS early in the fighting. Nearby elements were already being hit by Egyptian artillery. The first thing we were told was, "There is a bunker not far from here if the bombing starts." At an observation bunker, a young lieutenant with curly hair squinted anxiously at the sky and chattered into his field telephone.

We talked with a noncommissioned officer nearby who had just returned from the canal. A grizzled oldtimer in his 50s, fighting his fourth war against the Arabs, he seemed to take the emergency in stride. "The Egyptians have much better equipment than ever before," he said. "It is helping them fight better than I have ever seen them." Then he laughingly motioned toward a young officer and exclaimed: "That kid was not even born when I was fighting in the 1948 war. Now I'm taking orders from him!"

Ahead of the field headquarters was flat and absolutely barren terrain interrupted at the horizon with moonscape ridges. In the distance, Israeli tank formations rolled across the windless desert, raising long trails of stagnant dust. Helicopters with dangling cargoes fluttered back and forth. High overhead, delta-winged jets streaked toward the west, and to the north, the tree-shaped smoke of shellbursts rose from a ridge.

As we headed farther west, getting closer to the canal, we encountered clusters of tanks stopped by the roadside, their crews relaxing. Some of the low-slung Fattens and big Centurions were waiting to advance. Others were serving as a defense against possible Egyptian commando leapfrog raids behind Israeli lines. Those Israelis who had already been in battle were telling fearful tales about some of Egypt's new Soviet-supplied weapons, especially the SA-6 missile, which has taken a devastating toll of Israeli jets. These soldiers also spoke with respect of the new Russian-made antitank weapon.

Nonetheless, the Israelis exuded confidence, some of which bordered on the fanciful. For example, when noting the enormous concentration of Egyptian tanks and troops on the east bank of the Suez Canal, one Israeli officer remarked: "I'm not sure that tactically we didn't want them to come across, since our ultimate objective is to demolish their military machine." Yet by the end of the week, that development was far off. In Sinai, the Israelis had still to deliver a victorious counterattack.

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