Monument to the 99th Brigade in the Six-Day War

The story

The monument to the 99th Brigade stands at Neot Hovav, south of Beersheba, and marks twenty-one of the brigade's soldiers who fell in the Six-Day War. The 99th Brigade is the continuation of the Negev Brigade — the name was changed in 1958 — and so this monument and the Negev Brigade Monument north of the city mark two chapters of the same body. The soldiers themselves initiated the monument, and designed, financed and erected it. It was designed by an officer in the brigade, the designer and artist Hovav Keruvi (1930–2007); the contractor who built it was Daniel Nagar of Beersheba; and it was dedicated on 6 June 1972. In the Six-Day War the brigade operated under the command of Col. Yekutiel Adam, within the division of Ariel Sharon. A brigade task force with two regular Nahal battalions and a reserve infantry battalion reached the Egyptian complex at Umm Katef after a hard march on foot, navigating through the dunes north of the complex; after a heavy artillery bombardment the three battalions charged, entered the communication trenches, and took control of the complex in a battle that lasted all night — and with that the way was opened for the armor and the central strongpoint of the Egyptian layout in Sinai was breached. A second brigade task force took control of the Kusseima area, and afterwards the brigade's forces operated in the area of El Arish and suffered casualties there as well. Six soldiers of the enlarged brigade were awarded the Chief of Staff's Citation. The monument is made of six square columns of gray exposed concrete, laid one upon another like a fan, and hence its nickname “the finger sculpture”: the first column lies flat, and the rest rise gradually up to the sixth, which stands upright to a height of fifteen meters. Six columns as the six days of the fighting — the one lying flat is the waiting, above it the days of alert, and those that follow are the rising, the leap, the battle and the victory. At the base is a metal plaque bearing “Yizkor”. The names of the fallen are not set up at the site, because of repeated vandalism of the monument.

• Commemoration
• War