In a battle on the Zikim base, Sergeant Eden Alon Levi, fell, while protecting her recruits with her body. Without thinking twice, her closest friend from the beginning of her service, Sergeant L., stepped into her big shoes and assumed command of the class that was left without a company commander. 

She trained them and continued by their side even when they joined the battalion - while digesting the bereavement that bound them together all the way

"Every step I've taken as a commander and fighter since October 7 - I've thought about Eden," was how Sergeant L. began our conversation about her good friend, the late Sergeant Eden Alon Levi. "We were inseparable from the first day in the IDF. We went through every stage together, from the basic training to the "Commanders" course.

At the end of the course, their paths parted for the first time when Sergeant Eden Alon Levy was assigned as a recruit commander and Sergeant L. returned to command the Tavor Battalion. On that Black Sabbath, the late Eden fell in battle at Bizikim while protecting her recruits.

"Just two weeks after she was killed, a new recruit commander had to be found for her class," says Sergeant L., "Thanks to the fact that I knew her best, I knew how to continue her path exactly as she would have wanted."

Sergeant L. quickly found herself facing the most difficult question - how to step into her shoes? 

"I didn't even know how to introduce myself to the soldiers or what the right way to address what they had been through and who they had lost was," she explains. 

"Besides the fact that I had lost a good friend - they had lost a commander, and that was no less difficult."

The rookie platoon found the notebooks of her friend who had fallen in battle and searched for a starting point in the content. Above all the summaries and lesson plans she had prepared, a sentence loomed large, the same one that she remembered the late Eden saying all the time: 

"Always raise your head, not your hands." 

From that moment on, she understood that her job was to pass on to the rookies everything they didn't have time to receive from their commander before she fell.

"The first step was to build trust between us," she shares honestly, "We learned together how to contain the common bereavement that fell upon us. We experienced challenging moments in which we strengthened each other in order to be able to move on."

Four and a half months later, the soldiers of the class completed their training and were assigned to the 'Venus' Company in the Tavor Battalion, alongside Sergeant L.: "Because I entered the position in the middle of training, and my connection with the late Eden, I got to know them in depth and a very special bond was formed between us."

The company has been taking up positions in Judea and Samaria since the beginning of the war. "In every arrest, operation or training that might have seemed complicated at first," she admits, "we learned together that everything can be overcome."

The event she remembers most is a classified rescue operation they carried out across the border: "There, they became the safest place for me, as I hope I was for them. We carried out one of the most complex missions the battalion has had since the beginning of the war - but thanks to the fact that the team is close-knit and everyone knows each other, we functioned exactly as we should."

Now, the fighters who were Eden's rookies in that battle in Zikim are already celebrating a year in the battalion.

Sergeant L. cannot hide the excitement and pride in her eyes: "In two weeks I will be discharged and we will hold a recurring event dedicated to her memory. If I could give them one thing just before, it would be to never give up on themselves and to remember why they are here. No matter what, I will be by their side - and so will Eden."