It took me at least five days and three historians to believe the story of 'Window 3'. The education NCO, the adjutancy NCO, and the ammo bunker NCO who hitchhiked to the Golan Heights boarded a tank with a reserve officer and found themselves at the center of a critical battle on Yom Kippur.

“I looked through the driver's periscope and saw hundreds of Syrian tanks. Some were firing, some were burned—I heard shells whistling. The realization that you are a lone tank is paralyzing; without a battalion, without a company and without a platoon," Amnon paused, and it seemed that in his imagination, he returned to that moment—the third morning of the Yom Kippur War. "When the second shell hit the turret, I was sure that was it. This is the end of the story of 'Window 3'." 

When the emergency siren sounded that Saturday, October 6th, 1973, Sgt. Amnon Kafkafi jumped off the couch in his home and told his mother not to worry. By that evening, he arrived at his home base—the Natan camp near Be'er Sheva.

At this time, Shalom Burstein (the battalion’s adjutancy head clerk) and Yosef Schatz (in charge of the ammunition bunker) also headed out. The three former tank commanders in the 82nd Battalion of the 7th Brigade were given non-combat positions months before the end of their three-year compulsory service. At the gate of the base, they discovered that the entire battalion was air-lifted to the northern front the night before and already went into combat, while they were left almost alone with the adjutant officer.

On the first day of the fighting, they were still loading emergency supplies from the storage depots on base when reports began to come in from the front: "We heard about what was happening and the high number of casualties, and we knew we were not going to be left behind." The adjutant, however, refused their request to leave the base on the grounds that there were enough forces on the northern front. The former tank commanders began looking for other ways to join their comrades in the Golan Heights.

Amnon as a young soldier (Credit: Family Archive)

Amnon decided to conduct another check and entered the empty Battalion Commander's office. He called the Armored Corps Headquarters on the phone and asked if they were really not needed at the front. The answer was, “Anyone who can go should go."

As evening fell, the three of them asked the adjutant to go out for a refreshment break at the "Montana Ice Cream Parlor" near the base. "No problem, and do not forget to bring some for me when you return," he replied. They immediately crossed the road and began to catch rides to the north.

Traveling all night, Schatz, Kafkafi, and Burstein reached the northern part of the country, on the way to the Philon Camp in Rosh Pina, where they hoped to get their comrades’ whereabouts. "Say, do you know what's going on in the Golan? Did you hear some news?" Kafkafi asked the truck driver a moment before reaching the destination, to which the driver replied, "The Syrians are in Nafach."

How can this be? Nafach was the Israeli army’s main headquarters in the Golan and was nearby, just a few minutes 'drive away.' “I was stunned. This was the first time I understood that something was horribly wrong," admitted Kafkafi, and pointed out the hair standing up on his arms. After trying to talk to Philon's Operations Squadron, they realized they would not be able to get information about available tanks or the battalion's location at all. They decided to continue to the Naftali camp following a rumor about malfunctioning tanks arriving there.

Unlike the three former tank commanders, who had just commuted from Be'er Sheva, Shmulik Zemel was a Lieutenant in a reserve brigade that fought from day one, and he returned to the home base to gather additional tanks to reinforce the forces on the northern front. He went to the Naftali camp, where he encountered the trio.

Reservists arrive at the Northern Storage facility (Photo: GPO Archive)

"I was sent to bring reinforcements, and when I met a bunch of these non-combatants, there was no question at all if they were going up to the Golan. Do they have training? They are needed at the front," Zemel says. The entire tank crew, which consisted entirely of commanders, arrived at the workshop and received the long-awaited "naked" tank—with no ammunition, guns, map or other essentials.

"It was like it just got out of the factory. We later filled in the missing parts from broken tanks on the side of the road," Kafkafi recalls.

Without wasting time, the four former tank commanders filled the various positions: Kafkafi to the driver’s seat, Schatz for the gunner position, Burstein to the loader compartment, and finally the tank commander, Zemel. On the way, they received the call sign for radio communication: ‘Window 3’, as signed in the contact forms. (The code ‘window’ means an adjutant. An amazing coincidence considering that only yesterday, three of them were still adjutancy people themselves—YSI.)

The "naked" tank - without ammunition, maps or other essentials (Photo: Dan Wegman)

Mile after mile, members of 'Window 3' rushed through the rocky terrain of the Golan Heights and among the burnt weapons of war that began to accumulate in the area. They were driving to the border quickly, according to the instructions over the radio of Brigadier General, the late Yanush Ben-Gal, the commander of the 7th brigade at the time.

Inside the heavy steel box, the blatant uncertainty was well felt, and the shortcomings that accompanied the tank at first became critical as darkness fell around them: "Unlike the Syrian tanks, we had no means of night vision; it was like traveling with blindfolds. After a few miles, we realized it was better to stop and wait for sunrise."

Yanush Ben-Gal and Rafael (Raful) Eitan in the Yom Kippur War (IDF Archives)

At first light, the tank returned to gallop to the Quneitra plateau and began to feel the storm of war approaching: "A barrage of dense artillery flattened the dirt road we were driving on, a few dozen meters ahead of me. I heard small clicks at the time and thought some pins became loose in the tracks of the tank. When I asked to stop and check, Shmulik shouted back at me from above, ‘It’s not the tracks, it’s bullets—they’re shooting at us!'"

After an encounter with two Syrian commando helicopters, the crew continued to drive to an observation point. When reaching a high position, they stopped, and suddenly, in front of 'Window 3', a completely surreal spectacle unfolded: about five Israeli tanks were standing and waging a containment battle in front of many dozens of Syrian tanks.

Without knowing it, the "non-combatants" tank joined the center of a battle, which would later be considered one of the most difficult battles in the history of the war: the "Valley of Weeping" (Valley of Tears). "There was no time to think about anything—we saw the few tanks around us trying their best to prevent the Syrians from breaking through the lines," Kafkafi and Zemel testified. "We took a stand and started firing."

"What to shoot at?" Schatz called out.
"Doesn't matter—shoot!" Zemel replied.
"What kind of shell?" he asked.
"It doesn’t matter—just shoot!"

54 Tons That Bounced Like a Rubber Ball

“For several minutes, adjutancy NCO Burstein quickly loaded shells, the NCO in charge of the ammo bunker Schatz aimed and fired, and the education NCO Kafkafi improved positions. And the enemy forces began to retreat—until we heard Yanush announce on the radio alerting us of a second wave."

"Pay attention—another attempt to push through your line, about 80 'heavies' are moving in your direction," the Brigadier General announced on the communications network. Within moments, a long convoy of tanks advanced rapidly into the valley.

Under a blanket of dust and engine smoke, Israeli forces began shooting the convoy that filled the valley. "They were everywhere, close and far away, dozens of Russian-built tanks," Zemel recalled. “It was no longer possible to see which of the tanks was abandoned or destroyed from previous encounters and which still posed a threat."

Syrian tanks in the east of the Weeping Valley. (IDF Archives)

One of the Israeli tanks improved its position behind them, each shell fired flying right next to Zemel's head: "If there was a moment I was afraid, it was this. There I realized that I could die at any moment; every little movement could completely end the story."

When the enemy tanks drew very close, the crew members realized that because they were on higher ground, they would have to advance down the slope in order to lower the barrel, and remained completely exposed to the Syrians. "A first shell aimed at us, almost from zero range, hit the ground under the tank and raised a heavy cloud of dust. I could not understand who was shooting at us, and we immediately tried to move back."

The tank commander's attempts to evade the Syrian tank gun sights came to naught, and another shell hit the left side of the turret. "The tank soared into the air—54 tons that bounced like a rubber ball," Amnon recalls how he got stuck in the driver’s compartment when it started to burn and managed to get out through the stuck tank hatch doors.

"With the explosion, I banged my head on the driver's handlebars, I tried to call them on the intercom and no one answered. I turned around and saw a yellow flash. It was hot as the sun; I realized the tank was burning, and if I didn’t leave then, either the remaining ammunition would explode or we’d absorb another Syrian shell", he said.

All hell broke loose outside; the intensity of the war passed in front of his eyes. "I saw the ground whiten from the heat of bullets that passed between my legs," Amnon recalled. When he and Zemel, who was thrown to the ground clear off the tank by the explosion, were completely exposed in front of the Syrian tanks, the two tried to understand what happened to the other crew members. "After a few seconds, Schatz emerged from the turret alone. We asked him, ‘What about Burstein?’ He replied with a murmur, ‘Killed.’”

The late Shalom Burstein on a trip to Samaria, about six months before the war (Photo: Amnon Kafkafi)

In fact, this was the last time the crew of "Window 3" were together. The remaining crew members were rescued aboard a tank that passed by. Schatz, who was unharmed, returned to the front. The others found their way to hospitals.

Only a few short sentences have been written about the fall of the late Shalom Burstein since.

Completing the battle puzzle

So how did this story stay under the radar? None of the hundreds of dusty documents opened last week in Latrun Armored Corps Museum have been able to explain how an entire tank crew was not documented. The curators of the Yad LaShiryon Archive also questioned the ability to find actual evidence for that single tank, since in the cover of the fog of war, almost no records remain.

The probability that 54 tons of steel would reach the battlefield, would fight, and, in the end, also manage to slip under the radar of battle campaign researchers in such a famous battle is surprising. It is not by chance that the researchers, whom I recently connected with, reacted in amazement to the news.

It was a difficult and tedious task, finding testimonies of the past proving the existence of the 'Window 3', right up to the last minute. But, on Friday afternoon, two days before the article was published, I managed to get the brigade's adjutancy officer Brigadier General Shlomo Cohen, to complete the final piece of the puzzle: "I was waiting for them on the road and gave the call signal to the tank called 'Window 3'.”

Now, with the full details clear, it is possible to add another chapter to the battle story of the "Valley of Tears" and update the glorious list of yet another tank that fought in this dramatic battle—the tank of 'Window 3'.

The story is published thanks to the testimony of Amnon Kafkafi and Shmulik Zemel and is dedicated to the memory of the late Shalom Burstein, who fell in battle, and the late Yosef Schatz, who was killed in a car accident two years after the war.