"I am so happy we are here and celebrating baby Mielle's first birthday after everything we went through," Roy Gur said. "Amit was looking forward to this day and I am thrilled that we can enjoy it. She is my private fighter," he said of his wife, Amit Gur, a member of the Border Police who was wounded on October 7, when both she and Roy were fighting the Hamas terrorists.
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On that fateful Saturday, the couple rushed into the protected room as soon as the sirens began, but quickly realized this was an out-of-the-ordinary situation. Roy, a police officer in Ofakim, ran out first to join the fighting in a battle that cost 32 lives, while Amit waited for her father to come and take the baby before she too set out to fight. She teamed up with Yehuda Keidar, a police officer who was later killed.
"He picked me up and we went to the Eshkol regional council where we are both stationed. On the way we saw a motorcycle on its side, full of IUDs and grenades and another car with a dead woman inside, lying on the dashboard. It was horrific but we had to get to our station and collect our arms, so we moved on," she said.
Soon after they encountered terrorists in a pickup. "All we had were our handguns but we opened fire," she said. "Yehuda took down the first and I shot the second and then we took in an RPG that exploded just behind us. Our ears were ringing for a few minutes, so we communicated using sign language. We kept shooting until an IDF force arrived and they took over," according to Amit.
After another encounter with terrorists, the two decided to reach Kibbutz Re'im where the fighting was intense.
"I identified two terrorists who went around Yehuda and an IDF officer. I opened fire at them, and one fell to the ground but the shooting continued," she said. "I felt a warm fluid run down my body and realized my hand was wounded. The officer ran to me with blood squirting from his neck. I could no longer shoot but I applied pressure to his wounds with my other hand and fired into the air so that we could be evacuated. We boarded a police car while I tried to locate Yehuda but could not see him," she said.
She and the wounded officer were taken to the Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva. "The scene there was horrific," she said. "People with limbs shot off and the smell of blood was everywhere. I tried to find Yehuda but after a few hours, I was told that he had died. In his funeral, the officer that was with us came and hugged me. He said he knew right from the start that Yehuda had died but thought that I would want to get his body out of the battle if I knew."
Meanwhile Roy kept fighting in Ofakim, but when he heard that Amit was hurt, rushed to Soroka to see her. "If he had continued to fight, I don't know if today we would have been together," Amit said as she looked at their little daughter. "We gave her a birthday with unicorns, and I cried when I read what friends and family wrote for her," she said.
"I am emotional over the mere fact that we could be here now to celebrate."