Battles in White

7 October attack: The story of the medical, nursing, and rescue teams

By: Yael Dreznik

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

When the first words of this book were written, we were still counting our dead. The most murderous terrorist attack that occurred on the soil of the State of Israel began on the morning of October 7, 2023, thousands of terrorists infiltrate into southern Israel under the cover of a coordinated missile attack, massacring about 1,200 people—residents of the south, soldiers, civilians. They beheaded, raped, amputated limbs, tortured, burned to death, and took 253 people— including babies and the elderly, women and children—into Hamas captivity.

Saturday morning, 06:29 a.m. For millions of people in the State of Israel, in hindsight, this exact hour will be remembered as an eternal turning point, a border line stretched between the world that was and the world that now is. Like an alarm siren symbolizing what was about to befall us, a siren shatters the morning in many areas across the country.

This book delves deep into the heart of the bustling effort involved in delivering care in the field, in trauma wards, and operating rooms, discussing principles of trauma care—principles written in blood. It narrates the gravest day in the history of the State of Israel from the perspective of healthcare professionals spanning the full spectrum of physical and psychological treatment: paramedics, surgeons, social workers, psychiatrists, nurses, and many others. Their story, though singular in its details, is part of a larger narrative encompassing what we, the citizens of Israel, endured on October 7.

Dr. Yael Dreznik, a senior pediatric surgeon at Schneider Children's Hospital, also volunteers in the reserves as an instructor for the ATLS trauma course. In the process of writing this book, she conducted in-depth interviews with a diverse range of medical, nursing, and rescue personnel who engaged in life-saving efforts on October 7.

Good book; awful narration

The book was good, I definitely recommend the kindle version over the audiobook. “Virtual voice” was the wrong choice for this book. Some pronunciations — particularly, but not limited to, the Hebrew words — were atrocious and even varied within the same sentence or paragraph. And some things were completely wrong: Israel writes their calendar dates in European format (e.g. 6.10.2023 for October 6, 2023) but the virtual voice read it as June 10, 2023. Did no one review this recording before publishing???