Sergeant Shalom Shitrit, a combat soldier in Golani's 13th Battalion who fought terrorists during the Oct. 7th surprise attack and was critically wounded, spoke to Kalman Liebskind and Asaf Lieberman, in an interview with Channel 2, about the day of the attack.
"Around 6:00 AM the missiles started raining down and we ran for cover. At one point we were told that terrorists had infiltrated, we fired weapons, put in cartridges, but we did not expect such a number of terrorists," he said.
At 6:40 in the morning he encountered the terrorists for the first time: "I immediately understood that this was a terrorist, I raised my weapon and released several bullets on him. The first terrorist fell and the second one shot incessantly at my leg. I didn't stop shooting and then the second fell as well."
"I went back and shouted to my friends 'I'm injured! I need a tourniquet!'" but his friends were busy fighting themselves. Shitrit said that he decided to remain silent and try to cover for the forces: "It's not easy. Your body is hysterical, and you're trying to somehow disconnect your head and emotion."
At a certain point he decided to pretend to be dead and kept his eyes open: "Another half hour passed, a terrorist came behind me and just walked over me. I waited for him to pass me, and I shot him from behind, I unloaded a cartridge on him. He also died and then I realized that I had no bullets. What do I do? I can't stay here."
Despite his injury, he decided to try to return to his friends: "My leg did not remain in one piece, the bone was completely broken, but when you have an adrenaline rush, you do not connect to the pain. I managed to stand on one leg, my left leg. I clung to the concrete and jumped, little by little, inside, towards my friends."
While he was trying to join two of his friends, a grenade was thrown at them: "The grenade exploded and both were injured. I fell to the floor, and I looked up and saw that I was in front of the APC. I crawled underneath. A minute after me the same friend who was wounded by the grenade also crawled there."
Shitrit said that he and his friend stayed under the APC for two and a half hours: "I said to myself, you've already lost a lot of blood and you're on borrowed time. I started saying goodbye to my family members, in my heart, one by one. There were moments when I wanted to expose myself, to finish this bad movie. But every time I thought of my family I said to myself - 'I'm not doing it, I'm not giving up.'"
"I closed my eyes and suddenly shots were fired next to me, on my left side, where Sagiv was laying. I think they were trying to make sure we were killed. None of the bullets hit me and I thought they hit Sagiv. It's a hard feeling, everyone is dead. Sagiv is now dead too. And I'm also about to die, a terrible death."
However, Shitrit later realized that his friend Sagiv was alive: "I patted him on the back, asked if he was hit, and he tells me no. In retrospect, Sagiv had fired the bullets and killed the last two terrorists there."
"What we saw there, I don't think one can imagine this. The number of corpses ... you don't see these things in the movies. Then an army vehicle came and evacuated us. I arrived in Soroka Hospital with a very low blood count, that's why they defined me as critically injured," he added.