War in Gaza

You’re sitting on your couch, tuned into the video game where your player is guarding the gate at the Israeli-Gaza border.

For the umpteenth time this day, the ‘code red’ alarm goes off, telling you to duck and cover. You press ‘B’ on your controller and suddenly the speakers start to shake and the whistle of the rocket blasting through the gate screams throughout your living room.

Phew. Your player survives the attack. The video game gets quiet again.

Meanwhile on that same front, some 7,000 miles away in Israel, a real soldier is preparing to dodge yet another rocket. But first, Kayla Mogil dusts off her uniform and picks up a piece of cooled shrapnel from the rocket that almost hit her. She’s going to give it to her younger brother Noah, who is back home, safe on Mercer Island.

Flashback to June 2013, where Mogil is performing her last routine as a graduating senior on the Mercer Island High School drill team. A year later, and only four months into her combat training for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Mogil is stationed right on the border where Israeli troops were entering into Gaza.

For the first time Mogil feared for her own life.

“It was scary because you heard screams, you heard people dying, there were rockets that landed right next to us. It was a night where nobody slept. We were looking at each other like, ‘When is this going to end?'”

After dodging rockets, Mogil remembers texting her dad saying she didn’t know if this would be the end. Until she was thrown into the middle of this war, it was hard for an 18-year-old to understand that at any minute she could die.

People think the role of a voluntary lone soldier (which can be anyone without parents in Israel) is to fulfill their service and return to their home country. But in a war it doesn’t matter if you are Israeli or Palestinian or American. This is one reality that Mogil learned fairly quick. After hearing of five lone soldiers—two from America—who died in the war, everything was put into perspective for her.

April 22, 2015 (Israel’s Memorial Day) was what Mogil describes as the hardest day of her life.

“Being there I was realizing that this day, my parents could have been remembering me. We were remembering our family.”

Fortunately, Mogil did survive these events and her two years of service in the IDF. The soldier, now 19, was reunited with her family upon returning home June 29.

“Being back is weird,” she says. “I’m used to being on army time. I’m definitely having a much harder time coming back than I thought I would.”

And while she adjusts to the unusual quietness of being at home, Mogil reflects upon her experiences in Israel.

Families around the world

After Gaza, Mogil was stationed back where she was meant to be in the West Bank. As part of the search and rescue combat unit, Mogil was tasked with a wide variety of missions around her station in Ramallah. Some involved spending days on guard duty in a pill box, guarding Jewish settlements, breaking up riots with tear gas, and making arrests.

“The times where I was most in danger of my life were during the war [in Gaza],” Mogil says, “but when I was stationed on the West Bank there were times where I might get stabbed or I would get a boulder slingshotted at me or get shot. I felt like I was in danger of getting injured, but I never felt danger for my actual life. It was more like, something might happen, but I won’t die.”

All of these things just seem so normal to Mogil, which is why she retells her stories so nonchalantly. In Israel everyone is drafted into the army when they turn 18 to serve at least two years, so being in the army is “no big deal.”

“It was my life. I’m so used to it,” she says.

Even with the little amount of connection Mogil had to the internet and social media during training, there were still times when she felt like she was missing out on things back home. In May 2014, Mogil asked permission from her commander to call home to wish her brother a happy birthday. Her parents had thrown him a surprise party.

“I just started bawling. It was one of those moments where I’m dirty, I had sand everywhere, I wasn’t happy because I felt like I was missing everything. But I don’t know what I would have done without my parents.”

Despite these difficult emotional times, Mogil found a way to stay positive and keep going with the support of her family and the Mercer Island community.

“This community has supported me in ways I can’t even describe. There were other lone soldiers who lost everything,” Mogil says. “What really kept me going is that people would write me letters and write me notes on Facebook and help out my parents—that was a big thing, that my parents felt like they had support.”

And while she is very happy to be back home with her family, Mogil knows that somewhere her other family is still fighting.

“To be honest I’m really happy I’m here right now wearing a dress and makeup because it’s something I haven’t done in a while,” says Mogil while laughing, “but it’s just put into perspective that there are so many more things in life more important than materialistic things. And at the same time, I’m here, but I know everything that’s going on at the base. I feel guilty that I’m not over there where people are struggling to keep that country safe. I did almost two years but I still feel like it wasn’t enough.”

The next chapter

While there is some lasting trauma along with minor injuries and a recovering back injury (she had surgery at the end of her service), Mogil says that she was fortunate to have been stationed with a great group of soldiers, while receiving support from friends and family at home. Her army friends called her the “lucky lone soldier.”

“I am incredibly proud to have served in a combat unit for search and rescue as a soldier. I think I did amazing things for a country that is a close ally to this country,” she says. “I’m happy I fought for it and did it.”

The journey was definitely difficult, and Mogil is quick not to glorify her experience, but overall she says that she got way more out of it than she had imagined. The young girl with a love for Israel came out a woman with a greater appreciation of her entire world.

“I feel that I’m definitely more mature coming out and I’m very appreciative of where we live. I can’t even imagine if Canada or Mexico would send rockets daily over America. [The experience] definitely opened my eyes.”

So what’s next for the soldier?

Mogil will attend Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University in New York in the fall. At Stern, Mogil plans to study international politics and political science.

Despite the nerves of starting her freshman year, Mogil says she is excited for the college experience and is ready to catch up with everyone else.

“Of course, God forbid, if something were to happen [in Israel] without a doubt I would pack up my bags and go. I can’t just leave my friends fighting out there on their own,” Mogil says.

But for now, Mogil will be packing up her bags again; only this time, the lone soldier is heading to Manhattan.

“This is the first time where I have no idea what’s about to happen.”