Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel and the Recruitment of Scholars

Hello Rabbi Michael,
I recently read a column on the website Needs Review (https://iyun.org.il/sedersheni/righteous-gentile-or-righteous-haredi/?unapproved=46031&moderation-hash=9dd0bc5a7734d16e59c221e7783df72a#comment-46031) in which Rabbi David Schmidl summarized a lesson Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel had previously given on the subject of why Haredim (or Talmidei Tochami) do not enlist in the IDF, raised several possibilities, and finally came to the conclusion:
“Wars waged here and the army here are not aimed at saving the lives of Israelis from a crisis that threatens their destruction. Their war is for the existence of the state. Like the armies of all the nations. There is no argument that it is so. Everyone admits this. And the difference is clear. […] The existence of the state is something that we have no interest in. It is unacceptable and impossible to force anyone to fight for a mission in which they have no interest.”
But it sounds very absurd to me that Rabbi Gedaliah expressed himself in this way. After all, he enlisted to fight in the War of Independence and tried to enlist again in the Six-Day War (at least according to what I know), so it would have sounded very strange to me that he perceived Israel’s wars as some kind of sacrifice on the altar of Zionism and the state and nothing more, and not as the actual salvation of all of Israel.
I know that you had some acquaintance with him and occasionally went to hear his lessons, and so I asked you: Did Rabbi Gedaliah ever actually express himself like this? Or does it make sense to you from your acquaintance with him that he expressed himself in this way?