Armor Soldier Shilo Algom on Sderot on October 7: 'Bodies on the Floor'

Shilo Algom, an armor fighter who studied at the Sderot Hesder yeshiva, recounts how he saw bodies through a gun sight on the morning of Simchat Torah 5784, was wounded when an RPG missile entered his tank during fighting in Rafah, which he entered with the force in May 2024, and returned to fighting in Rafah after a month and a half at home.

On the morning of Simchat Torah 5784, Shilo Algom was at the Sderot Hesder yeshiva, where he had studied for a year and a half before enlisting for armor service, in order to celebrate the holiday with his friends. He was then approaching the end of his military training. After hearing gunfire, everyone who had a weapon took a corner to defend the yeshiva, where according to him there were 'about 400 people.'

Algom went up to an observation point that overlooked the police station area. 'I put my head to the gun sight and saw the floor full of people, bodies on the floor. I had no idea if those people were police, terrorists or civilians,' he said. Around 15:40, as the holiday ended, he left Sderot and drove to his house, saw bodies of terrorists that had not yet been evacuated on the way, and decided at night to skip his brother's wedding and drive to the base.

In May 2024 he entered Rafah with the force, and there a double RPG was fired at the tank: one hit the armor and the other penetrated inside. Algom was wounded by shrapnel in his left thigh and abdomen and suffered breathing injuries, was evacuated to Soroka and then to Beilinson Hospital, and returned to fighting in Rafah after a month and a half at home. 'My friends are there and the platoon needs me, so I'm coming, despite how hard it is,' he said.

During the period Algom lost friends, including Sgt. Itai Fogel HY"D, who was killed on the eve of Yom Kippur 5785 from a direct hit of an anti-tank missile. About two weeks after he was discharged he received a report of a bomb that exploded in Beit Hanoun that resulted in the deaths of three of his friends in the platoon where he served. During the war he wrote the book 'Meeting in Dreams,' among other things in a UNRWA notebook, and after the book was published he began to give lectures on the experiences he went through.