When I met Adi Gruman’s father, he told me that what mattered most to him was that people understand: Adi was not only a fighter in her final moments, she was a fighter throughout her life. She faced challenges head-on and refused to give up, no matter how difficult the path became. She kept moving forward, even when it seemed impossible.
On the morning of October 7, as sirens began to sound, Adi tried calling her family. No one answered except her grandmother.
“Grandma, everything’s okay,” she said. “There are rockets, we’re in a protected space. We’ll talk later.”
Adi’s mother later recalled that when she woke up, she tried calling her daughter. Adi didn’t answer but sent a message saying she couldn’t talk. Her mother replied: “Please tell me you’re not leaving the base.”
That was the last message.
Terrorists had overrun the Home Front Command base at Urim. The combat intelligence soldiers stationed nearby tried to call for reinforcements before going in to fight, but quickly realized none would come. There was no one available to help them now. The mission to retake the base and stop the terrorists rested entirely on their shoulders.
In those critical moments, Adi stepped forward again and again. At a time when everything seemed to be collapsing, she chose to stand face-to-face with the terrorists, to confront them in order to protect others.
Adi Gruman’s story, the story of the battle in which she fought and fell, is told here in the words of Lt. Tikva Clements, a combat intelligence team commander and Adi’s commanding officer from the day she enlisted until the day she was killed:
“We were told there was no point in waiting, there would be no reinforcements. It was just us. Only we could fight and stop the terrorists. If we didn’t, they would keep advancing and take over more positions.
Out of a team of nearly twenty female soldiers, I had to choose who would go in with me. It was important for me to project confidence, to make them feel that everything was under control, that I knew what I was doing and that we could rely on ourselves, even though, in truth, there was no certainty at all.
I knew I needed a medic, a sharpshooter, and a machine gunner, and I chose them one by one. I moved between the soldiers, saying a word here and there to strengthen them, just as I had done throughout their training. And I could see how focused they were. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Until we actually saw the terrorists, it felt almost like a video game, organizing forces, planning strategy. In the end, I had one more spot for a soldier, and I chose Adi, because I knew she was a fighter, through and through.
But Adi didn’t start out that way. She was very quiet, and at first she struggled to find her place. She was the furthest thing from a ‘fighter’ in terms of her character. The physical tests were difficult for her, as was shooting, everything was a challenge. About a month and a half into training, she seriously considered quitting.
Then we had a full week out in the field. She kept asking to speak to her parents. It seemed like she wouldn’t make it through the course. But after that week, something shifted. She made a decision to stay, and to succeed.
The first time she attempted the obstacle course, I wasn’t sure how she would make it through. She kept coming back again and again, putting in extra hours, training on her own. One Saturday, I told them that those who wanted to could stay and practice, and she stayed.
Every day she would attempt the obstacle course and she kept failing it. Again. And again. And again. Her hands were already torn and bleeding, but she asked to tape them up and keep going. Other soldiers who couldn’t complete the course were told they could still finish basic training, but that didn’t interest her. She didn’t want any special consideration. She didn’t give up on herself.
On the final day of training, she finally made it, she completed the obstacle course. The entire team lit up. Everyone jumped on her, celebrating with her. It meant so much to her. She didn’t have many friends back home, and suddenly here, everyone embraced her. She had found her place.
The next day we had a march, and I gave her my insignia pin. From that moment on, she flourished. She was always eager to learn. Even when I went over emergency procedures with the team and everyone else was bored and just wanted it to end, she later messaged me asking to sit down together on Friday evening and go deeper. She wanted to be professional. She wanted to understand everything.
One day, another team commander, frustrated with his own unit, said to me: ‘Why don’t I have more soldiers like her?’
When we went in to clear the base, we saw the terrorists’ motorcycles lying outside. They had been moving around freely, taking over the base as if it were their own. The air was filled with gunfire, terrorists shooting, and our team returning fire, trying to neutralize them. Then the deputy company commander told me he needed firepower up front.
At a certain point, we understood that the terrorists were inside the command center, and that we had to take it in order to regain control. It was on us. We gathered all the teams we had at a relatively protected point where we could make decisions and plan our next move. A commander and a soldier went up to the roof to get a clearer picture and guide us, and then we split into three forces to take the building.
Again, I had to decide, who would move forward with me, and who would stay behind to provide cover. I took the machine gunner with me, left the sharpshooter behind to cover us, and said: ‘I need two more, come.’
Adi immediately volunteered to join us. She didn’t have to, but she chose to move ahead. I asked her if she was okay, and she gave me a look that said, ‘Why are you even asking? I’m not the issue, the mission is what’s important.’ That was who she was. Always noticing who was struggling and trying to help. She had true grit and character, with gel nail polish on her nails.
We had to cross a road and advance toward a position where we knew terrorists were waiting. It was very difficult to understand what was happening. Even though it was a base near ours, we had never been there, and during the fighting it was hard to make sense of which building anyone was referring to over the radio.
Each time, two or three soldiers ran forward while the others provided cover. It took several minutes, but eventually we reached the command center and surrounded it, half the force from the right, half from the left.
We rounded the first corner, heard a noise, and realized there was a terrorist in front of us. We tried to pull back to bring in more soldiers, but then he emerged from where he was hiding, threw a grenade, and fired a burst. We all dropped to the ground and immediately returned fire.
I looked back and saw that two soldiers had been hit. One of them was Adi. I called for my medic, and another medic arrived as well. They tried to treat them. Adi was already unconscious, and the other soldier was losing a great deal of blood. I understood we had to evacuate them immediately.
I told my machine gunner to fire continuously and cover us. I lifted one of the soldiers, and the company commander next to me lifted Adi, and we simply started running back toward our base.
While we were evacuating the wounded, the fighting continued and eventually came to an end. After that, the rest of the day passed kind of passed on autopilot. We had to secure the base, make sure no terrorists were approaching. I tried to stay with the soldiers, not to be alone.
All day I kept calling my superiors, asking what was happening with the wounded we had evacuated. I was told that one of them had gone into surgery. When it came to Adi, at first they said they couldn’t locate her at Soroka Hospital, and then they stopped answering.
That evening, my company commander called and told me that Adi had been killed. She said her parents had not yet been informed, so I could not say anything, and I was not allowed to tell the soldiers either.
Those moments, when I knew and no one else did, were the hardest. I couldn’t say anything to anyone. I was alone with that knowledge. But in the end, that’s what we were trained for, that as commanders, we would sometimes be on our own. Making decisions alone. Knowing things alone. Being a commander also means feeling alone.
We weren’t able to attend Adi’s funeral. We only went to the thirty-day memorial, and it was the first time I had left the area since October 7. At the end of the ceremony, when everyone had gone, I remained standing alone by her grave, and suddenly all the walls I had built inside myself collapsed.
A month had passed, and the tears finally came. There, on the ground beside her grave, was the first time I truly broke down, since October 7, since Adi was killed, since I stood facing terrorists, since I had to tell my soldiers that our team would never be whole again, since I saw her fall and lose consciousness, since we carried her back.
Before that, there had been no time to stop. No time to cry. No time to think about my own feelings, only to see what others needed, to carry out the mission, to do everything that had to be done.”
***
Lieutenant Clements’ monologue is taken from the book Lohamot (“Women Fighters”), which brings together twenty firsthand accounts from female soldiers over the past two years. I began writing this book without fully understanding the scale of the transformation taking place behind the smoke of the battlefield, a transformation led by women fighters.
At every meeting, I was struck by the gap between their humility and modesty and the extraordinary strength revealed when they began to speak about where they had been and what they had done in uniform during the war. From the tank crew member who siphoned fuel on October 5 for a tank that would help block a breach in the fence two days later, to the 53-year-old doctor who reported for reserve duty in Gaza and Syria; from the company commander wounded in battle who applied a tourniquet to herself and kept fighting, to the officer in her eighth month of pregnancy who insisted on remaining on the Lebanese front, to the battalion commander whose children encouraged her and sent her into battle.
Now, as the sounds of war begin to fade, the moment has come when questions are asked, when the abilities of these women fighters are doubted, and the necessity of women commanders and leaders is called into question.
This is precisely the moment to listen to them. To give them the stage, to hear what they have to say, and to thank them for daring, for putting their bodies and souls on the line, to carve a path for all of us.
