Valley of Tears

while visiting my friends in Israel we decided to try and find some burnt out Syrian tanks. we had just spent the night in the northern town of Metula. we looked on the map and saw the outpost of "Oz" around the area my friend thought she had climbed on some one drunken night in the past. we drove around and after going the wrong way (i was driving the Honda in between mines fields and turned around just before reaching the Syrian border, muddin' it in Israel) we found the entrance to the Valley of Tears memorial for the 77th "Oz" Regiment. the entrance is in front of the entrance to the Kibbutz Elrom (in case you ever are in the area). it was a very chilly and windy day. we parked at the memorial and there was a lady just sitting in her car the whole time and my guess is that a family member died in battle, we were there at the end of October and the battle was on 06Oct1973 (on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement). we walked around the memorial and looked out over the Syrian border. the memorial is made of welded parts of tanks with the dead inscribed in the metal with torch.

we could see a fighting position to the left with a tank and we drove over to it. we walked around in the trenches and explored above ground for a while. the trenches were chest high and reinforced with corrugated metal and posts to hold their shape. you could see out over a vast flat plain and right in front of the bunker complex was a marked mine field. the girls were getting cold and they went back to the car. we followed them to get CB's iTouch with the flashlight app so we could go into the bunkers. the girls stayed in the car and CB and i walked back into the defences. we entered a trench and walked down the chute into the bunker. it was a basic concrete bunker you would see in WWII movies, cold concrete with a slit opening giving a good field of fire onto the plain below. this bunker was hit almost perfectly by either a small tank shell or, more probably, a RPG round. it entered the slit and skimmed the top of the slit causing a half-moon and hitting the left wall.

there was also bullet holes in the concrete on the right hand wall. i have been in combat and was lucky enough to be above ground and with a light infantry unit. i could not imagine the strength it would take to stand your ground in a cold coffin like these bunkers. knowing that at one point in the battle only 40 Israeli tanks were holding off 500 Syrian tanks (and if i remember right, there were also Iraqi tanks mixed in) it really shows how a few heroes can save a whole country. we were walking around and came across another bunker but it was too dark in it. we deduced that the slit must be caved in so we searched out another. we tried to enter the bunker in the rear, obviously a command and supply bunker since it didn't open up to the battle field. as we entered it both CB and i got the willies and decided to get the hell out fast. we both were laughing, nervously, as we left the bunker. we had both got that creepy feeling and both our arms had goose bumps. we were still laughing when we came around the command bunker and saw the girls in the car. but they looked a bit shaken and started talking before we could even sit in the car.

they were sitting in the car and were reading and talking when suddenly the door locks on the car started to go up and down. they got startled and then my girl said it was us guys screwing with them. then a little later it happened again, the locks went up and down fast a number of times and then stopped. my girl said that us guys were using the key chain to lock and unlock the doors but then they said they remembered i had left the keys with them. and sure enough, they were just sitting there on the console. just as they noticed that, we came around the corner after getting spooked ourselves. we sat in the car for a bit and i talked about what i knew about the battle (from reading The Yom Kippur War). i didn't feel scared at all and the others were not upset at all. to know what happened there, and the history it made and produced, i can see why spirits would inhabit the area. it was the one and only time in my life i really truly believe that kind of thinking. that something "other" could reach out and communicate with living persons.