This is the story of how close the end really came during the Yom Kippur War. Even as Israel’s tanks held out in the north, turning a stretch of the Golan into ‘The Valley of Tears,’ the forces in the south were stretched to the breaking point. Nonetheless, an American airlift will provide the arms, and the impetuous general Ariel Sharon the means, to yet snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.