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Two wars in one, vividly relived The re-release of Chaim Herzog’s The War of Atonement — The Inside Story of the Yom Kippur War, 1973 (Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal Limited, 300 pages with 9 maps and 18 photos) comes as we mark the 25th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Though untold numbers of books have been written about the war since this one was published in 1975, Herzog’s volume remains one of the most comprehensive works on the subject. As his son, Col. Michael Herzog, puts it in the new introduction to the book, The War of Atonement ’seems like a wine that has improved with age.’ Herzog collected records of battlefield and general command briefings to tell what he calls ’the inside story’ of the war. But while it is unabashedly revealing, it does not even pretend to give an overall review of the war from anything but the Israeli perspective. Egyptian and Syrian armies appear only as statements about their strength and movements. Occasionally, a captured conversation is thrown in for perspective. Herzog lays the foundation for his riveting, weakness- exposing story of the war with a comprehensive section on the political and military background of the conflict, from the end of the Six Day War until the attacks commenced at 2 p.m. on October 6, 1973. What will strike the reader is the utter shock suffered by the swaggering, overconfident and complacent generals, who were preparing to fight the Six Day War all over again. Much is described about the intelligence breakdown; and Herzog traces the development of Israel’s strategic thought up until the war. The second section deals with the war itself. As a former head of military intelligence, Herzog’s ability to describe the operations is to be expected. With amazing lucidity, he recounts the fighting of complex battles and includes moving episodes and exploits by ordinary soldiers while keeping the whole picture of the war in view. Herzog’s description of the war makes it clear that it was, in essence, two very different wars, one against the Syrians in the North and the other against the Egyptians in the South. Instead of a chronological account of the war, he tells each front’s story separately. Herzog is able to avoid the lifeless writing that so often plagues historians. One of his tricks was to pepper his chapters with the stories of small forces. He recalls with horror the story of Lt. David Abu- Dirham, who desperately led the battle against Egyptian forces at his Suez Canal position of Orkal, only to be wounded and captured during an attempted evacuation. The amazing story of the 7th Brigade’s stand against the Syrian onslaught reads like fiction. At times Herzog turns his prose into stiff, terse writing, almost making the reader feel as if he is reading actual intelligence reports: ’2:55 — A report arrived that four Syrian helicopters loaded with troops of a Syrian commando battalion were approaching the upper level of the ski lift, a mile from the Hermon position. One helicopter exploded.’ At other points, the writing becomes gripped by high emotion, as in the description of OC Southern Command Maj.- Gen. Shmuel Gonen’s last conversation with Maj.-Gen. Albert Mandler. Gonen, communicating by radio with Mandler on the Egyptian front, asked him a question. There was no reply. Gonen, turning to Ezer Weizman, said that ’Albert has been killed.’ Weizman’s reply? ’What nonsense, you ass.’ HERZOG uses data to provide perspective. For example, he notes that on the evening before the war broke out, Israel had 177 tanks and 11 batteries of artillery on the Golan Heights. The Syrians had over 900 tanks and 140 batteries of artillery and another 600 tanks in reserve. In fact, the Arab force which launched the attack on Israel was roughly the same size as NATO’s European forces. Herzog informs us that the Syrians lost a total of 1,150 tanks; 867 of them were recovered by Israel, many of them in good running order. An estimated 3,500 Syrian soldiers were killed. Israel lost some 250 tanks and 772 soldiers fell on the Golan. The Egyptians lost 264 Soviet-built tanks in one day. Unfortunately, Herzog did not tally the losses on the southern front. The nine maps in the book are excellent. They give most geographical locations and unit names mentioned in the text without being too cluttered. One of the changes in this new edition is the moving of maps to near the relevant text, instead of being collected at the end of the book. An interesting note: Of the 18 photos in the book, all but four are of generals. This is typical of the mindset of Herzog’s generation — that the armies revolve around the generals. Noticeably missing is any mention of Israel’s nuclear policy and practice during the war. It is not clear whether this was the result of self-censorship. THE final section of the book is perhaps the most prophetic, dealing with lessons learned. Herzog foresaw the peace that was to be forged between Israel and Egypt. But he also saw how the Middle East was entering a phase of military sophistication that would eventually break the confines of the field of battle. ’Civilian populations will be exposed to no less a degree than the military forces in any future war,’ Herzog wrote. That prophecy was to become reality during the Iraqi Scud attacks in the 1991 Gulf War. Just as fascinating is the introduction by Michael Herzog, an IDF intelligence officer, who wrote that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s successful policy of a limited military initiative aimed at motivating a diplomatic process ’is still relevant to his Syrian colleague. ’Twenty-five years have passed since the war, and the question still remains as to whether and to what extent Assad (one of the few leaders in the Middle East who has remained in power since then) has learned the lesson of Sadat’s policy — of war and peace — and whether he will try to imitate it.’ The War of Atonement did spur a change in Israel’s military doctrine with its conclusions that maneuverability on the modern battlefield could be synergized with enhanced volume and precision of firepower. It also gave impetus to an integrated inter-force battle philosophy. But the younger Herzog insists that the ’main message’ of the book is that ’man’ is the key to victory, even in the era of technology. One debatable point Col. Herzog makes in his introduction is his questioning of the depth of American backing, which he claims can no longer be taken for granted in any future war, as it was in 1973. This book will appeal to all ages, from those who sent their sons to fight in that war, to those who, 25 years later, are seeking a grasp of this remarkable and traumatic period of Israel’s history.
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