One of those lethal holding actions that have become legend was led by a young lieutenant named Zvi Gringold, affectionately known as ‘Lieutenant Zvicka,’ whose hit-and-run tactics are credited with single-handedly holding at bay a major thrust by almost 50 tanks. His guerrilla-style tactics on the route leading toward his brigade’s HQ caused the Syrians to believe they were up against a sizable Israeli force. After more than 10 of its tanks were destroyed, the Syrian column withdrew, its commander deciding to hold off and deal with the Israeli force in daylight. Gringold continued to engage the Syrians throughout the night and following day, destroying upward of 30 tanks, until injuries, burns and exhaustion caught up with him and he was evacuated. Gringold recovered and was subsequently awarded Israel’s highest decoration, Ot Hagvura, for his heroic defense of Nafakh.

Another blocking force operating in the south, albeit attached to the 7th Brigade, was ‘Force Tiger’ under Captain Meir Zamir. Force Tiger’s seven tanks were sent to block a column of some 40 Syrian tanks that had broken through at Rafid and was heading north–a move that threatened to cut off and isolate the 7th Brigade. Force Tiger laid an ambush that succeeded in destroying half the Syrian tanks during the wee hours of the morning. When 20 tanks escaped, Zamir prepared a second ambush that succeeded in finishing off the Syrian battalion just after dawn the next morning.

Yet another Syrian thrust by two brigades was advancing rapidly on the southern access road in that wide-open sector and inexplicably stopped short in its tracks just before reaching El Al. While some of its units fanned off toward other objectives to the north, a large part of the Syrian force failed to press its advantage, a move that in effect meant that the Syrians just waited for the Israeli reserves to arrive and engage them. A number of theories abound as to why the Syrians would halt their advance in the midst of their momentum, including fear of an ambush on what certainly should have been a heavily defended route, lack of flexibility and initiative once their objectives had been achieved, overextended supply lines and the more far-fetched fear of an Israeli nuclear reprisal in that critical hour. Whatever the true reason, their lack of initiative at a critical moment robbed the Syrians of the chance to reach the Jordan River–and perhaps beyond–virtually unopposed.

In the morning, the Syrians pressed their attack yet again. The few remaining defenders of the Barak Brigade pleaded for air support, which again suffered heavy losses. Ironically, the Syrians helped solve the problem of foiling the anti-aircraft missile threat. After the Syrians fired rockets at Israeli civilian areas, the Chel Ha’Avir (Israel Defense Forces/Air Force, or IDF/AF) responded with reprisal attacks on Syrian infrastructure in Damascus and beyond. To defend against these attacks, the Syrians pulled back some of their missile batteries from the Golan front. Overall, it took the IDF/AF several days to develop tactics and gain experience in defeating Syrian air defense systems, and 27 Israeli aircraft were lost on the Golan front in ground-support missions, as well as scores of others suffering various degrees of damage.

On the morning of October 7, Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan toured the Golan front and recognized how critical the situation truly was. Not only were the access routes into the Golan threatened, but also the entire north of Israel. Grasping the very real prospect of a Syrian breakthrough into integral Israel, the minister of defense considered a retreat to a line just forward of the escarpment overlooking the Jordan Valley for a major defensive stand–in effect putting his forces’ backs against a wall. Israel prepared to destroy the bridges over the Jordan River to prevent a Syrian breakthrough.

The Syrian 1st Armored Division was advancing up the route toward the Golan HQ at Nafakh. Colonel Yitzhak Ben-Shoham, the Barak Brigade’s commander, realized his brigade was for all intents and purposes destroyed. He therefore organized and led a small group of surviving tanks in a holding action that slowed the Syrian advance on his HQ for several hours until he and the rest of the defenders were killed. With the brigade commander dead, no reserves in sight and two Syrian brigades advancing toward the Golan HQ–and with some units having bypassed the base on both flanks–the situation could only be described as grave. Lead elements of the Syrian brigades actually reached Nafakh and broke through the base’s southern perimeter. One Syrian T-55 crashed into General Eitan’s HQ, only to be knocked out by the last operational tank in Gringold’s platoon.

At that point, Eitan evacuated his headquarters to an improvised location farther to the north. Those left to defend the base manned two trackless Centurions from the camp repair depot and fired bazookas in a final stand that knocked out several Syrian tanks until those last Israeli tanks were destroyed.

The 188th Barak Brigade was no more. The Syrians were poised to overrun the Golan headquarters at Nafakh and, seemingly, the entire Golan. That final stand, however, was enough to buy a few crucial additional minutes. While the Syrians paused to regroup after their final opposition had been neutralized, the first Israeli reserve units began reaching what had become the front lines. Finding Syrian tanks milling about their command headquarters, the Israelis immediately opened fire and attacked, dispersing the Syrians.

The arrival of the Israeli reservists spelled the beginning of the end for Syria. For both sides, the war had been about time–the Israelis doing all they could to buy time until their reserves arrived, and the Syrians racing against the clock to achieve their objectives before the Israeli mobilization. While many more bloody battles would take place, those first reserve units coming up the Golan and engaging the Syrians at Nafakh meant that the tide had turned.

The reservists found the Syrians enjoying nearly free reign in the Golan’s southern sector. With Syrian tanks advancing along the routes down toward the Jordan River, the critical situation allowed no time to organize divisions and brigades. Instead, platoons and companies of tanks and other units were rushed off to battle as quickly as the forces could be mustered, at times being thrown in against Syrian battalions and even brigades. The fresh Israeli reserve units halted the near–and, in some cases, actual–retreat of what remained of their front-line forces and set about checking the Syrian advance. By midnight on day two of the war, the reserves had managed to stabilize what had been a disintegrating front–with the Syrians having penetrated to areas a mere 10-minute drive from the Jordan River and Sea of Galilee and to less than a kilometer from El Al on the southern access road.

Those gains had not come easily. In spite of their superior numbers, the Syrians’ supply lines, extending great distances from their rear areas to points deep into the Golan, had been decimated by the Israeli defenders, and they could no longer replenish and support their forces. Convoys of supplies and reinforcements were under constant attack by the IDF/AF, as well as IDF armor and other ground forces, severely straining the Syrian advance. While the Syrians dug in to consolidate their gains, the Israelis went on the offensive.

Brigadier General Moshe Peled led a division up the Ein Gev road into the center of the southern sector while Maj. Gen. Dan Laner’s division moved up the Yehudia road farther to the north–a parallel advance that boxed in the 1st Syrian Armored Division and effectively brought the Syrians’ brief conquest to an end. The Syrians fought viciously to free themselves from that pincer movement. A major confrontation near Hushniya camp, which the Syrians had captured the previous night and turned into a forward supply base, ended with hundreds of wrecked, burning and smoldering Syrian tanks and armored vehicles and other vehicles littering the landscape.

By October 10, the Israelis had forced the Syrians back to the antebellum cease-fire line in the southern sector. Well aware of the strong Syrian defensive preparations in the south, Israel chose the northern Golan, with its more difficult, less-defended terrain, as the launching area for its counterattack into Syria itself. Among the units joining the counterattack was the reincarnated Barak Brigade. Since 90 percent of its original commanders had been killed or wounded, Barak’s remnants were joined by replacements, reorganized and returned to fighting strength for the counteroffensive that penetrated deep into Syria–until a United Nations-sanctioned cease-fire came into effect on October 23, officially ending hostilities.

Although the war ended with Israeli forces on the move toward the Syrian capital, the Yom Kippur War–or Ramadan War, as it is known to the Arabs–shattered the myth of Israeli invincibility. The Syrians’ success in maintaining the element of surprise and its forces’ discipline in executing its attack helped that country regain much of the honor it had lost in the debacle of 1967. The victorious Israelis, on the other hand, had won a Pyrrhic victory. Horrible losses had been suffered, epitomized by the obliteration of the 188th Barak Brigade. While the war reaffirmed the Israeli defense doctrine of relying on the reserves’ arrival within 24 hours to defeat a numerically superior enemy force, there was no time for celebration as the country buried the 2,222 soldiers who had paid the ultimate price for their country’s survival and attended to its 7,251 wounded.

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This article was written by Gary Rashba and originally published in the October 1998 issue of Military History magazine.

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