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Kings of the Mountain: A Year of Fighting on the Deadliest Outpost in Lebanon
“I sat down in the Black Hawk and listened to the propeller blades churn through the thick night skies of Lebanon, like they’re trying to stabilize some of the chaos in the evil mixture lurking just beyond the horizon. It’s been two weeks since the greatest disaster in IDF history. The reality of it all penetrates my fatigues and soaks into my body. My mind quickly makes the switch. Welcome to Lebanon.”
It was a cold winter night in 1997 when Lt. Colonel Yiftah Guy was given the unenviable position of “acting commander of the Ali Taher Ridge Battalion”—AKA the Beaufort Battalion. Boasting the highest casualty count in Lebanon, the outpost built around the legendary Crusaders’ fort was the only wall of defense standing between the Hezbollah terrorist organization and the Israeli civilians living only two miles away.
It was also deemed cursed. A tactical disaster.
A death trap.
A veteran of the Lebanon front, Guy led his battalion—a band of characters as wild as they were courageous—into the maw of the beast. In his honest, sober memoir, he describes the fierce fighting over every inch of the Lebanon front. Through blood and brotherhood, loss and resilience, Kings of the Mountain reveals not just the cost of holding the line, but the deeper toll war exacts on the men who fight it.
With every bullet tearing through the thin mountain air, every ambush in the dead of night, every impossible choice of who to save and sacrifice, Guy confronts not only an implacable enemy, but the bone-breaking weight of command, which ultimately changed everything he once believed—about war, peace, death, and love.
It was a cold winter night in 1997 when Lt. Colonel Yiftah Guy was given the unenviable position of “acting commander of the Ali Taher Ridge Battalion”—AKA the Beaufort Battalion. Boasting the highest casualty count in Lebanon, the outpost built around the legendary Crusaders’ fort was the only wall of defense standing between the Hezbollah terrorist organization and the Israeli civilians living only two miles away.
It was also deemed cursed. A tactical disaster.
A death trap.
A veteran of the Lebanon front, Guy led his battalion—a band of characters as wild as they were courageous—into the maw of the beast. In his honest, sober memoir, he describes the fierce fighting over every inch of the Lebanon front. Through blood and brotherhood, loss and resilience, Kings of the Mountain reveals not just the cost of holding the line, but the deeper toll war exacts on the men who fight it.
With every bullet tearing through the thin mountain air, every ambush in the dead of night, every impossible choice of who to save and sacrifice, Guy confronts not only an implacable enemy, but the bone-breaking weight of command, which ultimately changed everything he once believed—about war, peace, death, and love.
244 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 15, 2026
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March 25, 2026
It was interesting to read this in-the-trenches military memoir of being deployed in Lebanon against Hezbollah forces a few decades ago. Today, that conflict is much more hot, and much wider.
Much is about the tension and tactics of manning a fixed position while trying to defend against and interdict a determined guerilla foe in an series of episodes of small scale asymmetric warfare.
One interesting, recurring theme was the Four Mothers (anti-war protest movement) .
Much is about the tension and tactics of manning a fixed position while trying to defend against and interdict a determined guerilla foe in an series of episodes of small scale asymmetric warfare.
One interesting, recurring theme was the Four Mothers (anti-war protest movement) .
Displaying 1 of 1 review