A nagging thought still floats through war reporter Trey Yingst’s mind about the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which he keeps replaying in his head: It could have been me.

As Hamas’s barbaric rampage against Israel was taking place, leaving 1,200 people dead and 240 taken hostage, Fox News’ Yingst rushed to the scene.

“One of the things that still sticks with me is how close my team and I were to death that fateful morning,” he writes in his new book “Black Saturday” (Harper Collins), noting that the The split-second decision to stop at a crossroads in Israel’s troubled south could have been the difference between life and death.

“If we had continued, we would have been in the middle of a bloodbath and would have been attacked by armed Hamas fighters. Would I have tried to talk to the gunmen before they killed me? Would I have explained in Arabic that I was a journalist?

“Would they have even murdered me?”

As Fox’s chief foreign correspondent, Yingst has spent the last decade building his reputation in war zones around the world on the front lines in Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine.

But nothing prepared him for last year when he was woken up in his Tel Aviv apartment at 7 a.m. on what became known as “Black Saturday,” the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

In his gripping first-hand account, Yingst, 31, speaks with soldiers, civilians, Israeli leaders and Hamas figures who paint a devastating picture of the cost of war. He writes about entering the Gaza Strip five times on military bases – a correspondent’s connections to military units in armed conflict – and witnessing tense firefights between Israel and Hamas.

As he tried to come to grips with the scale of the attacks amid the confusion and shock on October 7, reporting from the crime scene became a delicate matter.

“Stick to the facts and avoid opinion- or emotion-based analysis,” he told himself.

“I had been preparing for this day for years, hoping it would never come,” he writes.

“I felt like I was made for this moment.”

In the bloody year that followed, Yingst spent nearly 200 days on the ground reporting on the attacks and their aftermath as the Israel-Hamas war unfolded.

“October 7th was one of the most horrific things I have ever seen. The consequences of this massacre were horrific. It was bloody, it was tangible. We felt it, we saw it, we smelled the bodies, we saw the people who were killed,” he told the Post while reporting this week from northern Israel, where fighting with Hezbollah is intensifying have.

“I think about that day a lot because we were so close to death,” he said. “We saw the people who were killed. We saw the people who didn’t have the luck we had, because that’s what it was – it was luck. There was no strategy for us to survive that day.”

And on Black Saturday, terror almost reached our homeland.

Yoav, the engineer in Yingst’s tight-knit group, agonized over the fate of his brother Gil, who lived about a mile from the Gaza border on Kibbutz Nir Oz.

The isolated community was overrun as hundreds of terrorists systematically slaughtered or kidnapped about a quarter of its 400 residents – and Yoav was unable to establish a connection with Gil and his wife of 40 years, Michal.

Terrorists had broken into their home and set it on fire while the naked couple barricaded themselves in their lockless safe room.

The army rescued her alive about 11 hours later.

The first few days of reality after October 7 took their toll on the journalist, and there were triggers at every turn.

During a visit to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, one of the hardest hit communities on the Gaza border, Yingst witnessed a funeral for one of at least 62 residents brutally murdered that day and others taken hostage.

As he walked through the crime scene home of the Kutz family, who had lived in Boston for years, wearing a New England Patriots cap, he was “numb.”

The bedroom was “a pool of dried blood,” writes Yingst – the bed, the floor and the walls.

The family of five was discovered in bed with father Aviv, “with his arms around his loved ones,” he writes.

The stench overwhelmed the normally stoic reporter, who immediately went to do breathing exercises.

“I felt like I was going to throw up,” he writes.

The unshakable sight of carnage – of families murdered alive en masse – wore Yingst down in the early days.

“I began to silently struggle with what we had seen in the first few days,” he writes. “In journalism school we are taught how to report – not how to clean someone’s blood from the bottom of their shoes, as I had to do over and over again.”

The psychological toll even affected his subconscious – for example, when he woke up in a panic from a nightmare in which he was tortured and thrown into a mass grave.

Or his parents’ home is attacked and he looks for safety.

The unspeakable brutality and bloodshed of October 7th and its aftermath changed him.

“I think that as a war correspondent I am becoming more and more empathetic. I think the more war I see, the more I want to work for peace because that is truly the most terrible thing,” he said, adding darkly: “There are no winners in war and this war is no different.”

His biggest message, which he wants to express both in his reporting and on his social media pages, is to “remind people to remain human and be empathetic,” he said.

“Don’t lose your humanity.”

And he follows his own advice – he tries to be kind to himself after the post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered as a war correspondent on the front lines.

He’s focused on “dealing with what we see in the healthiest way possible,” he said, by relying on cold showers, healthy eating and avoiding alcohol.

“I think it’s really easy for people to fall into unhealthy habits when you experience these things and it takes a toll on your mental health. I don’t want to be one of those people,” he said.

“I saw so many of the great war correspondents ruin their lives with drugs and alcohol,” he writes in the book, expressing sympathy for their plight.

“I also resolved not to fall down that rabbit hole.”

After six years in the Middle East and covering the war last year, reintegrating into civilian life presents real difficulties.

“It’s a culture shock,” he said of a brief return to New York that included attending a friend’s wedding.

“You have to go from talking about missiles and missile attacks to talking about the weather and sports,” he lamented, adding that it was “a bit of a challenge for him to reintegrate into society.”

Yingst decided to cut short the trip back to New York when it became clear that Israeli forces would move into Lebanon this week, largely taking the concept of work-life balance off the table.

“People will say it’s unhealthy and I don’t care,” he said.

“This is my passion – this is my identity, my calling.”

Still, he doesn’t plan on swapping his numerous bulletproof vests for a desk job any time soon.

“I witnessed the massacre and watched people die before our eyes,” he said.

“I feel even more motivated to make sure this story is told.”