Synopsis

A young American serving in the Israeli Defense Force finds himself embroiled in the heat of combat as he and his squad fight to survive against overwhelming odds in an isolated outpost.

Twenty-two year old Michael Forbes is home in the US on leave from service in the IDF.

 His father is a Christian pastor. His mother is an Israeli Christian. Michael is a citizen of both countries. His brother, David, serves as a Ranger in the US Army.

 Michael and David are both young men of faith. They see an evil loose in the world, an evil that they feel compelled to fight. David fights with the US Army in Afghanistan. Michael fights with the IDF in Israel, his mother’s homeland and the only country in the Mid-East where Christians are protected.

 They fight the same enemy, under two flags but under one God.

 A terrorist attack in Israel sparks a sudden, large-scale war in the north of Israel.

Michael is driven to return to Israel and his squad as fast as he can.

 Michael’s family and childhood friends struggle to understand and accept his driving desire to get back to Israel and join his unit in the fight.

 Emotions run high as they confront their own fears and faith.

Michael touches down in Israel within two days. Leah, his cousin who is in the IDF, picks him up. She is armed and on a war footing, just like the rest of the country. Too late to travel to his base, they spend the night at his mother’s childhood house in Jerusalem. They talk about family and Israel, and they pray, interrupted by rocket attacks.

Leah has to report to her unit in the morning and can take Michael only part way to his base. She leaves him at a crossroads with heavy military traffic.

Michael snags a ride to his unit’s base but the unit has deployed south, toward the fighting. His day-long journey to reach them brings him step-by-step closer to the fighting.

Alone and struggling to get to his squad-mates, he moves like a detached observer through a nation at war. He sees the signs of war, hears the distant sounds, sees the bloodied wounded but he’s still not in it.

Each move draws him closer to the fighting, deeper into the pit.

Michael reaches his unit. His squad is guarding a check-point at the edge of the fighting, near a small Kibbutz. His squad-mates are happy to see him but think he’s a fool for rushing back. We get to know them (and their fears) through their back-and-forth, non-stop banter.

Michael fits right in. They are a band of brothers.

Michael and his team witness combat in the middle of the night when an outpost two hundred yards away is attacked. Michael watches like a kid on the Fourth of July as tracers and explosions light up the hillside in the distance.

The fighting dies down, then his position is hit in a sudden, terrifying blast of rocket and machine gun fire. They fight back and drive the enemy away, but at a cost. Michael sees his first combat death.

The next day Michael’s unit is assigned a mission; they are to assault and occupy a school outside a village five miles out. Rockets are being fired at the Kibbutz from the school grounds. 

In a strong combat sequence, Michael’s unit assaults the school and drives the enemy out, killing most of them. It is a fast, fierce fight and Michael performs like a soldier.

The unit is left to hold the school until a larger force can relieve them. They are few in numbers and exposed in the compound. They are out on a limb and they know it.

After a series of probing attacks the enemy realizes that the school is held by just a small force. The enemy decides to take it back and wipe the Israelis out.

They attack in force. The Israelis hold in a hard fight, but at a cost.

An IDF soldier is captured by the terrorists during the fight. They beat him as they drag him across the field toward cover. Michael and his squad watch in horror. They can’t rescue him but they can’t let the terrorists take him.

Hirsch, Michael’s sergeant, is close friends with the captured soldier but in an act of extreme courage and anguish he fires on the soldier and the terrorists, killing them all.

The power of the moment is raw, paralyzing.

Michael and his squad-mates each changes in his own way, each adjusts to the reality of killing, the immediate threat of death.

Michael is a warrior, not a stone-cold killer, but a true war-fighter. He disobeys an order to crawl out into no-man’s land in the darkness to retrieve the body of a fallen IDF soldier.  

Michael’s act of heroism puts him in a sudden hand-to-hand fight to the death in the moon-lit field, no guns, no knives, just hands, knees, teeth, a rock. The war, the world, is reduced to two men, mortal enemies, in a kill-or-be-killed fight in the empty darkness.

Michael survives the deadly struggle and drags his comrade’s body back.

Michael is changed. The primeval, utterly savage fight in the darkness haunts his eyes, his face and marks his soul.

Michael has crossed a line to a cold, unforgiving world of life or death, of kill or be killed. He has gone in ninety-six hours from the comfort of his childhood bed to the harrowing cauldron, the gates of the truly terrible hell of war.

Michael and his squad-mates lean on their faith, call on God, knowing that they are fighting true evil.

Surrounded, out-numbered and running low on ammunition, his wounded, depleted unit has to hold…hold to the last man if that’s what it takes…

The enemy attacks again…  

The IDF and its soldiers are portrayed as humane, professional, real.

(Lone Soldier was researched with active duty and veteran IDF troops, including Lone Soldiers and on the ground along the Syrian border and Gaza)