Sane in Damascus

There are lessons here about dealing with difficult situations, and what’s really important. Much is owed to this man, and those like him, many of whom lost their lives.

I just started to read it and it is very interesting, so far.

"Sane in Damascus" is the brief but well-written memoir of IDF reserve armor company commander Amnon Sharon's experience during the Yom Kippur War. Sharon's reserve unit was one of the first to engage the Syrian Army in the lowlands surrounding the Golan Heights. He writes candidly of his unit's cavalier attitude, post-Six Day War hubris and lack of preparation as they rolled out of their company area to face the largest armor formation gathered for battle since WWII. And he writes movingly and with some self-deprecating humor of the confusion, chaos and loss of life from the brief engagement that destroyed his unit and led to his capture by the Syrians. Sharon spent the rest of the war and the brief post-war negotiation phase as a POW. Most of his fellow prisoners were downed IDF pilots whom Sharon clearly admired for their coolness and elite status in the IDF. He pulls no punches in describing the activities of some Israeli prisoners who cooperated with the Syrians or otherwise behaved shamefully in captivity. His description of torture methods, Syrian attitudes and interrogation protocols, and the psychological pressures of captivity are a must read for anyone studying SERE lessons-learned, Syrian POW procedures, and other important issues related to war in the Middle East. His blunt assessment of the IDF's poor readiness -- especially his own reserve unit -- is an important and valuable lesson-learned for all professional and reserve component soldiers. This is a very valuable book for such readers.Sharon wrote this to memorialize his fallen compatriots, inspire a new generation of IDF soldiers as to the merits of faith and prayer in surviving combat and captivity, and to bring personal closure to his own experiences and subsequent struggles with PTSD. The book is not long at 160 pages but it contains a valuable appendix to fill in details of the war and give a behind the scenes look at events surrounding Sharon's capture and imprisonment. This book is highly recommended.

This small book is about an immense hero, an Israeli military prisoner in Syria, how he suffered at Syrian hands, and why he was able to endure. The tale should be read and understood because of the history it relates, its revelations about Israel and Syria in the 1970s and because it teaches people how to live and endure despite the problems of daily life.Amnon Sharon, an Israeli business man with a pregnant wife, was in the military reserves as a captain of the armored corps when Israel was unexpectedly attacked during the early morning hours of October 6, 1973, on the sacred holiday of Yom Kippur, when many soldiers were home on leave with their families to celebrate the sacred holiday. Sharon was a secular Jew who observed the holiday as a day of pleasure and not as a period of religious obligation. However, in prison, Sharon tells us, "I learned to believe in God, in the God present in the heart of every person willing to accept Him, for God helps those who help themselves."Sharon is called to military duty that Yom Kippur and leads his poorly equipped group of tanks to the northern Sharon heights where his tank is hit and set on fire. He is wounded and seized as a prisoner.He is kept in oppressive isolation in a small germ infested cell for five of the eight months that he was imprisoned. He is given nothing to read and spends hours thinking about his family, what they are doing. Has his wife given birth to their second son? He is fed a scanty diet with worm infested foods and has to learn how to spit out the worms as one might spit out an olive pit while enjoying a martini. He is seized and pulled into daily interrogations where he is forced to stand for hours with a smelly black sack covering his head. He is beaten in every part of his body by sadistic soldiers who attempt to force this reservist reveal secret information about the makeup of the active duty Israeli forces, something he knows nothing about. His open bleeding wounds become infected, but are not treated. He still suffers from these wounds more than thirty years after they were inflicted. His feet trouble him daily and he lost feeling in every finger.Sharon knows little about Jewish holidays and prayers when he enters his imprisonment. Yet, he tries while imprisoned, in his own way, to celebrate the holidays when he thinks they are occurring. He creates his own prayer, a prayer he recites three times each day, a prayer that suffuses his being with a sense of solidarity with God and with solace. Hear O Israel. The Lord is God, the Lord is One. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, through whose word everything came to be. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, through whose word everything is done. Lord God, give mestrength to continue, keep me healthy, protect me and my family. Amen, amen, amen.Sharon does not return to his civilian job when he is released and returns home. He hides his throbbing pains and joins the standing army of his people. He is appointed commander of a reserve battalion, then fights in Lebanon in Operation Peace for Galilee, later commands a compulsory service battalion in Sinai, and still later assumes an administrative position as deputy head of doctrine for the Israeli armed corps.While Sharon does not mention him, we should compare his experiences with those of the famous Viennese psychiatrist Victor E. Frankl, who died in 1997, who suffered for three years in Auschwitz, Dachau and other Nazi concentration camps. Frankl wrote a landmark bestseller about his unspeakable experiences called Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy.Frankl notices that the primary force that sustains people in adversity is meaning; if individuals have meaning in their life, they have a better chance to survive. Those who lack meaning in their lives have nothing to sustain them when they find themselves in horrible situations. Many people turn to religion for this meaning, and to the extent that they truly believe, they can bear adversity.Frankl found another meaning while he suffered in the Nazi cells. He thought of being reunited with his wife, whom he loved dearly. He imagined the reunion. This yearning for his wife gave him meaning, a sense of purpose, a reason to live, and it sustained him. Later, when he was released he learnt that his wife had died during her internment. Yet, because she had been alive in his mind for the three year of his imprisonment, although dead, she kept him alive.Sharon's account shows that he was saved by both his new religious feelings and his love of family; these gave him the meaning he needed to survive.