This is the personal story of an outstanding military commander, leading men he did not know into battle. It is also a story of the people of the Israeli Reserve Armored Forces, who inadvertently become heroes in a brutal war.
A young armored corps officer is nominated to his first post as commander of an armored brigade in the Israeli Northern Command in 1973, two months prior to the Yom Kippur War. In less than fifteen hours and against all odds, his brigade climbs the Golan Heights to lead a desperate battle against a huge Syrian armored force attacking by surprise on a wide front. Suffering heavy losses, the men manning the outdated Centurion tanks of the 679th Armored Brigade relentlessly fight superior Syrian and Iraqi forces, snatching victory from the brink of defeat, bringing the battle to Syria, forty kilometers from Damascus.
This book is about the dramatic and human story of heroism and fear, about camaraderie, about the wounded soldiers escaping from hospitals to go back to their tanks; about the dead and the dying giving strength to the survivors.
