Question

Hello Rabbi Michael,
Recently I read a column on the Tzarich Iyun site (https://iyun.org.il/sedersheni/righteous-gentile-or-righteous-haredi/?unapproved=46031&moderation-hash=9dd0bc5a7734d16e59c221e7783df72a#comment-46031) in which it is brought in the name of Rabbi David Shmidel, who summarized a lesson that R' Gedaliah Nadel gave in the past on the question of why the Haredim (or Torah scholars) do not enlist in the IDF. He raised several possibilities and in the end arrived at the conclusion:
"The wars that have been fought here, and the army here, are not aimed at saving Jewish lives from an enemy bent on destroying them. Their war is for the existence of the state, like the armies of all the gentile states. There is no argument that this is so. Everyone agrees about this. And the difference is clear. […] The existence of the state is something in which we have no interest at all. It is neither accepted nor conceivable to force a person to fight for a mission in which he has no interest whatsoever."
But it sounds very far-fetched to me that R' Gedaliah would have spoken that way. After all, he enlisted to fight in the War of Independence and tried again to enlist in the Six-Day War (at least from what I know), so it seemed very puzzling to me that he would have viewed Israel's wars as some kind of sacrifice on the altar of Zionism and the state, and nothing more, rather than as the literal rescue of the Jewish people.
I know that you had some acquaintance with him and from time to time went to hear his lessons, and so I wanted to ask you: did R' Gedaliah ever actually say something like that? Or from your acquaintance with him, does it sound plausible to you that he would have expressed himself that way?