About two weeks before he fell in battle, Capt. Maoz Israel Recanati left an operation in southern Lebanon to visit wounded soldiers from his unit at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa. There, he met R., a 22-year-old tank soldier from the 7th Armored Brigade’s 77th Battalion who had been wounded in the leg, and gave him a flag from Recanati’s 12th Battalion of the Golani Brigade.
The flag still hangs in R.’s hospital room. Days after receiving it, R. attended Recanati’s funeral in a wheelchair.
R. was wounded on April 26 when a joint Golani and armored force operating in southern Lebanon was hit by an explosive-laden first-person-view (FPV) drone launched by Hezbollah. The strike killed Sergeant Idan Fooks and wounded six others, four of them seriously.
During the evacuation, another FPV drone was launched toward the helicopter sent to rescue the wounded. Golani troops opened fire at the incoming threat with their personal weapons and narrowly managed to prevent a disaster.
R., who suffered a leg injury and faces a long rehabilitation, was a close friend of Fooks. He asked that a photo of his fallen comrade be hung above his hospital bed, bearing a phrase Fooks often used: “Live like there’s no tomorrow.”
On his first leave, Recanati visited wounded soldiers from the 12th Battalion and also entered R.’s room.
“He came in with his big smile and said he strongly believed in his soldiers and in the hard work they were doing in Lebanon,” one soldier said. “He encouraged R. and his family, gave them his battalion flag and promised he would visit again.”
Another soldier said: “It is deeply painful that a few days later he returned to Lebanon and was killed by the same kind of drone he had always warned about. On Sunday, R. insisted on attending Capt. Recanati’s funeral in Jerusalem, arriving by ambulance and wheelchair. Now the flag hanging here remains the last memento from him.”