Sergeant Shalom Sheetrit, a fighter in Golani's 13th Battalion, told today (Tuesday) in an interview for 'KAN BET' about the battle in which he was mortally wounded on October 7. Sheetrit was at the Pega outpost, about 250 meters from the border with Gaza.
Sheetrit says that around six o'clock the missiles started firing and he and his friends ran to the shelter. "At a certain point we were told that there was an infiltration of terrorists, we fired the weapons, put in cartridges, but we did not expect such many terrorists," he said.
He saw the first two terrorists at 6:40, a meter beyond the wall. "I immediately understood that it was a terrorist, I raised my weapon, and released several bullets at him. The first terrorist fell, and the other shot a bunch of bullets at me, hitting my leg. I didn't stop shooting and then the other terrorist fell too" he continued, "I went back and shouted to my friends 'I'm wounded! I need a tourniquet!'” But his friends were busy fighting.
"I decided to shut up. Trying to cover up, it's not easy. Your body is hysterical, and you try to somehow disconnect your head and emotion." He decided to lie in a puddle of blood and pretend to be dead, with his eyes open. "Another half hour passed, and a terrorist came behind me and just skips me. I waited for him to pass me, and I shot him from behind, I unloaded a full cartridge on him, and he also died and then I realized I had no bullets, what do I do? I can't stay here."
"The leg didn't stay intact, the bone was completely broken," Sheetrit continues to tell the story, "but you're in an adrenaline rush, so you don't care about the pain. I manage to stand on one leg, my left leg. I cling to the concrete and jump, little by little, inside, towards the friends."
Sheetrit managed to go back, and saw two fighters in front of him, while he was reaching them, a grenade was thrown at them. "The grenade exploded and both of them were injured. I fell to the floor, and I raised my head and saw that I was in front of an APC (Armoured personnel carrier). I crawled under the APC. A minute after me crawls the same friend who was wounded by the grenade."
Sheetrit and the other fighter, Sagiv, lay under the APC for two and a half hours. "I say to myself, Shalom, you've already lost a lot of blood and you're on borrowed time. I started saying goodbye to 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 remembered my family, and I say to myself - 'I'm not doing it, I'm not giving up.'"
"I close my eyes and suddenly shots are fired next to me, on my left side, where Sagiv is lying," he continued, "I think they are trying to make sure we are killed. None of the bullets hit me and I think they hit Sagiv. It's a hard feeling, everyone is dead. Sagiv is now too dead. And I'm also going to die, a terrible death."
"But then I realized that Sagiv was breathing," he recalls excitedly, "I pat him on the back, asking if he was hit, and he tells me no. In retrospect, Sagiv fired the bullets and killed the last two terrorists in the position."
They got out from under the APC and the sights they saw he will never forget: "What we saw there, I don't care what one imagines one can see. The number of bodies... you don't see these things in the movies. Then an APC came and cleared us, I arrived in Soroka with a really low blood level, that's why they defined me as mortally wounded."
Sheetrit woke up in the hospital only a week later. "It wasn't until the 28th that I found out that there was a war, I asked for a mobile phone, and my brother told me before he gave me the phone, 'Listen there was an event at the Nova party...', and then he told me about the settlements in the Otef... I find it hard to believe in this reality, everything that happened".
But he insisted on remaining optimistic despite everything he experienced, to a certain extent. "There are also good things that happened because of all this. I think as a people we are so united now. I don't know if it would have happened any other way, and that is my greatest consolation, for the loss of all my friends."