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The documentation from the conquest of Mount Hermon brought him back to the most difficult moment of his life: "I already thought the country was gone" - Walla! news

2022-02-15T21:07:08.388Z


The exposure of the images from the occupation of the outpost during the Yom Kippur War flooded hard feelings from one of the painful events of those days. One of the few fighters left to fight the Syrian commando viewed the documentation, and restored the "sights of destruction and corpses" from the inferno. But also the moment when he realized that the state still exists


The documentation from the conquest of Mount Hermon brought him back to the most difficult moment of his life: "I already thought the country was gone"

The exposure of the images from the occupation of the outpost during the Yom Kippur War flooded hard feelings from one of the painful events of those days.

One of the few fighters left to fight the Syrian commando viewed the documentation, and restored the "sights of destruction and corpses" from the inferno.

But also the moment when he realized that the state still exists

Eli Ashkenazi

15/02/2022

Tuesday, 15 February 2022, 17:01 Updated: 22:58

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In the video: Color documentation of IDF forces during the Yom Kippur War (Photo: IDF Archives and the defense establishment)

"The pictures took me back to the hard days of my life," said Surin Kovalio following the publication of the first pictures taken from the Syrian army's occupation of Mount Hermon during the Yom Kippur War.



In the war that broke out on October 6, 1973, Covelio was 19.5 years old, a soldier in regular service.

He was sent to the Hermon outpost almost six months before the war broke out.

He was a paratrooper and on Mount Hermon was in an intelligence position.

He was already well acquainted with the outpost as well as the Syrian territories seen from the observation point on the high mountain.



"On the day the war broke out, we asked for help. But we were told that we had nothing to worry about and that even with the Syrian bulldozers they would not be able to enter the Hermon outpost," Kovalio said.

As is well known, the reality was quite different;

The Syrian commando force, which landed with helicopters near the post, managed to capture it from the small force that guarded it.

Kovalio was ordered to stand in front of the main entrance and shoot at the Syrian soldiers who were trying to break in.

He was wounded by a spray grenade and remembers from that stage a loud noise of planes, artillery fire and shouting "



When he pulls with him a wounded soldier, whom he did not recognize due to the darkness in the outposts of the outpost, he found a hiding place.

He bandaged the wounded man and watered him, but a few hours later he died of his wounds.

Covallio heard his last breaths.

"For a week, IDF forces did not reach Mount Hermon, a terrible thing happened."

"We were told we had nothing to worry about."

A Syrian soldier at the Hermon outpost (Photo: screenshot, no)

He was in hiding for a week.

"I thought that all the soldiers in the post were killed and that the state was gone. I told myself that if IDF forces did not reach Mount Hermon for a week, something terrible happened." Still exists. In addition he saw an exchange of fire in the Golan and realized that the war is continuing and that it is taking place in Syrian territory.



Kovalio is in contact with Yoni Dinur, who revealed the photos of the Syrian photographer and they share historical information about the Yom Kippur War. " It surprised me, "he said." It brought me back to the sights I saw when I left the outpost after a week in hiding.

Everything was destroyed and bodies were laid. "

More on Walla!

The picture of the Syrian victory: the conquest of Mount Hermon as never seen before

To the full article

"I thought that all the soldiers who were at the post were killed and that the country was gone."

Syrians at the Hermon outpost (Photo: screenshot, without)

For eight and a half months he was in Syrian captivity and underwent severe interrogations and torture there, but he says it was less difficult than the week alone at the outpost.



He says that although the photos take him back to those days, they do not create mental difficulty.

"I have a curiosity to see the pictures and I would like to see more pictures, if they are discovered later," he said.

However, he says that a soldier has no ability to see in the soldiers standing in front of fighters that he can try to understand what they went through as soldiers sent to war.



After the period of captivity and what he experienced during it he defines his Syrian captives as "bad people".

He said this was also evident in the behavior of the Syrian army in the civil war that raged in the country.

"What I went through there and what I saw are terrible things. I have no good opinion of them and I do not believe we can make peace with them one day."

One of the Syrian photographers on Mount Hermon after the occupation (Photo: screenshot, no)

Covellio, almost 70 years old, continues to serve in the reserve.

He volunteers as a truck driver.

He started a family and says despite the difficult period he went through "I have no problem dealing with the past. There are moments when it is harder for me, for example - I can not be alone and I will always aspire to be with people. But I am an optimistic person. I read and heard a lot about what Holocaust survivors went through "Those people who went through the most difficult things a person can go through, immigrated to Israel, established families, settlements, businesses. They are an example for me."

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Source: walla

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