Since the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, media outlets have been filled with official reports and unofficial claims about the progress of the fighting.
However, there have been few stories from individual Israeli soldiers about the realities of the war on the ground.
One soldier who has received clearance to speak with the press is Master Sgt. (res.) Eytan T., who was injured in battle and who spoke with The Media Line from his hospital room at Sheba Medical Center in central Israel.
“Everyone thought I was dead,” said T., whose last name has been redacted for security purposes.
Joining the masses to fight for his country
In the days after the Oct. 7 attack, the Israel Defense Forces called up about 300,000 reservists. Roughly 330,000 answered the call.
T., a reservist in the 184th Battalion of the 14th Armored Brigade, was one of those fighters.
On the morning of the attack, T. was with his family in Gush Etzion, celebrating the holiday of Simchat Torah. Like millions of others in Israel, he and his family were alerted that something was wrong when Hamas fired thousands of rockets into civilian communities, triggering nationwide alarms.
However, as religious Jews, they avoided their phones and other technology until sundown, when the rumors they’d been hearing of the atrocities in the South were confirmed.
“We checked our phones and saw that the stories, and more, were true,” T. said.
“So I immediately sent a WhatsApp message to my commander and told him that no matter what, I’m coming to the reserves. I understood that it’s a real war and that I need to be there to save my country, to save the people of the south.”
T. said he also wanted to prevent future conflicts.
“I have children. The eldest is 17, and he started his testing for the IDF. At midnight, when I went to the reserves draft, I told him, ‘Dad’s going to the war, so you don’t need to,’” he said.
But the 184th Battalion—famous in Israel for its history in the 1973 Yom Kippur War—would not see war just yet. Israel mounted an air attack on Hamas targets and delayed a ground incursion for three weeks. This gave the ground forces and reservists time to practice and prepare, as well as giving Palestinian civilians several weeks to flee the northern Gaza war zone.
Maj. Sgt. (res.) T's role in the ground invasion
The ground invasion began on Oct. 27, and T.’s primary mission was to follow the IDF’s D-9R armored bulldozers into Gaza to clear a path for the ground soldiers and troops to enter and engage the enemy more effectively.
This is a painstakingly slow process, in which forces have to go almost door to door, T. said.
“The big mission [eliminating Hamas and rescuing Israeli hostages] is done in small steps. So in the beginning, we just paved the way,” he said.
“Then, after 48 hours, we started to fight Hamas. We entered the first line of homes in the city and started to fight the terrorists. We received some fire. We’d see Hamas shoot at other units or near us, and we’d destroy them. Whatever they [IDF ground troops] needed.”
Despite Hamas’ urban guerrilla warfare tactics and deep entrenchment among civilians, T. said Israel is winning every battle. The IDF is leagues ahead of the terrorist group in practice and capability.
But Hamas is still capable of causing injuries and deaths. And it wasn’t long before the 184th would suffer its first casualties.
Roughly a week into Israel’s ground invasion, T. was injured when his tank unit came under heavy fire in northern Gaza.
“The troops told us, ‘We want to go into this and that home. You save us. If you see something, you need to shoot.’ And that’s all. It was silent, and we worked very well. After three or four homes, someone spotted people on a roof. We knew that no IDF soldiers were on the roof, not on roofs and not in tunnels. So we went with the tank to investigate. In that minute, that second, we were hit with an RPG.”
T. was hit by shrapnel that left him with severe internal bleeding and a collapsed lung.
“Two [pieces of] shrapnel hit my lung, and it filled with blood. My tank commander came running under fire from RPGs, sniper fire, and bombing. … It was a hard fight … and in three minutes, he got me from the tank,” T. said.
“My commander came to the tank and asked what happened. … But I couldn’t hear anything. It was like I was in a pool. I said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’ That was the last thing I remember.”
The next thing he remembers is waking up in Soroka Hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.
He was able to fill the gap from the stories of the team who saved his life, starting with the field medic who operated on him under heavy Hamas fire.
“The medic said, ‘I don’t know how I did it. I just imagined I was in a surgery room, and everything was quiet and good, and I was in a Zen place.’ But that was just the beginning. He thought I was dead. Everyone who saw me thought I was dead,” T. said.
Despite their fears for the worst, the medic and several soldiers placed T. on a stretcher and carried him some 500 meters under fire and across rough terrain to an IDF Hummer. It was a dangerous and hurried mission, during which one of the rescuing soldiers broke his leg. The Hummer then drove T. and the wounded soldier towards a helicopter, which airlifted them to the hospital.
Along the way, a medic in the helicopter continued to perform field surgery on T. When he finally woke up, his mind was still on the mission.
“When I woke up in Soroka, I asked myself, ‘What am I doing here? I need to be in Gaza, fighting alongside my friends. … It took me time to understand that I was injured.’“
For T. and many other, if not most, Israelis, this war is about more than defeating Hamas and rescuing the hostages in Gaza. It is a warning to Israel’s other enemies, especially the regime in Iran and its proxies.
“This war is a test for Israel,” T. said. “If we don’t destroy Hamas, then Hizbullah will know it. Iran will know it. And they’ll see in that minute that Israel is weak, and they’ll come to attack us. We know it from the north, from Syria, [even] from Jordan maybe. … They plan. They’re ready to attack us, and they want to see if we’re strong enough to damage Hamas or not.”
For T., at least for now, his fight remains confined to the hospital. In the weeks following his injury and before speaking with The Media Line, he had several more operations. Even after those, he still needed several breaks during the interview to catch his breath and take a drink of water.
Since the ground operation began, 104 soldiers have been killed in action and thousands have been injured. More than 300 soldiers were killed in the initial attacks on Oct. 7.