Moshe Dayan - Injury and Eye Patch

Injury and Eye Patch

On June 7, 1941, the night before the invasion of the Syria-Lebanon Campaign, Dayan's unit crossed the border and secured two bridges over the Litani River. When they were not relieved as expected, at 04:00 on 8 June, the unit perceived that it was exposed to possible attack and – on its own initiative – assaulted a nearby Vichy police station, capturing it in a firefight. A few hours later, as Dayan was on the roof of the building using binoculars to scan enemy Vichy French positions on the other side of the river, they were struck by a French rifle bullet fired by a marksman from several hundred yards away, propelling metal and glass fragments into his left eye and causing it severe damage. Six hours passed before he could be evacuated, and he would have died if not for Bernard Dov Protter who took care of him until they were evacuated. Dayan lost the eye. In addition, the damage to the extraocular muscles was such that Dayan could not be fitted with a glass eye, and he was forced to adopt the black eyepatch that became his trademark.

In the years immediately following, the disability caused him some psychological pain. Dayan wrote in his autobiography: "I reflected with considerable misgivings on my future as a cripple without a skill, trade, or profession to provide for my family." He added that he was "ready to make any effort and stand any suffering, if only I could get rid of my black eye patch. The attention it drew was intolerable to me. I preferred to shut myself up at home, doing anything, rather than encounter the reactions of people wherever I went."