Sebastian Junger on the Frontlines of Afghanistan
By Marlene Hall
Sebastian Junger is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and is a New York Times best seller with “The Perfect Storm,” which was turned into a movie with George Clooney. Now he has written the book “War” and co-produced, along with Tim Hetherington, the Sundance film festival award winning documentary “Restrepo."
"War” and “Restrepo” capture the war in Afghanistan’s deadliest fighting area the Korangal Valley, from American military soldiers’ point of view. Junger spent on and off about 12 months, from 2007-2008, with the Second Platoon of Battle Company, part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Vincenza, Italy.
The documentary is called “Restrepo” because the platoon built an outpost named after their fallen medic Pfc. Juan Sebastian “Doc” Restrepo, who is briefly in the movie in the beginning. Junger describes the Restrepo Outpost in his book as, “the most vulnerable base in the most hotly contested valley of the entire American sector.” The Korangal is a hotbed of al-Qaeda and insurgent activity as the enemy would leave Pakistan on their way to Kabul via the valley. Every time the soldiers would leave their outpost they would always be engaged in enemy fire.
The Korangal Valley is so deadly that the military pulled out of the 6 mile valley that is 25 miles from the border of Pakistan in April 2010. Nearly 50 soldiers lost their lives in the 5 years the US fought in the Korangal Valley from 2005-April 2010.
Junger took time out of his busy schedule to discuss his experiences, Americans’ contributions to Afghanistan, and his ties to nominated Medal of Honor Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta.
Please explain your involvement with Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta being nominated for the Medal of Honor as I feel that you’re the reason he is receiving it!
(Sgt Giunta fought off several Taliban and ensured they did not drag off one of his soldier buddies).
More on Staff Sergeant Giunta’s heroics here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/10/AR2010091002712.html
We are not the reason he is getting it. The rumors about him getting it started immediately after the combat incident. I really don’t think the selection process factors the press in. He also takes up some pages in my book “War”, but he is not in the movie we made. I really don’t think that’s the reason (my writing about it).
We are putting together a mini-video of Sgt Giunta that can be seen on my website in the next couple of weeks. It is about what he did and footage of the action. It will not be seen anywhere else.
You don’t think any of your documentation helped at all?
The documentation I got from the military and from interviewing him. Presumably he told the military the same story he told me. I didn’t have any information that the military didn’t have.
So you weren’t around during Giunta’s medal of honor combat incident?
No. I mean I was around in the valley, but not during Giunta’s incident. I wasn’t part of the military board’s deliberation on who gets the Medal of Honor.
Why do you think it’s been so rare for the Medal of Honor to be Awarded for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Sgt Giunta is the only person that survived the action. There are two other Medal of Honor recipients in October, but it is posthumous for action in Afghanistan.
*The two posthumous Medal of Honor award went to: Sergeant First Class Jared Monti (Army) and Lieutenant Michael Murphy (Navy).http://www.history.army.mil/html/moh/afghanistan.html
How do you stay in such great physical shape and keep up with the soldiers? That must have been brutal.
I exercise a lot. A lot of physical capability is mental willingness. I was an athlete in college. I am used to telling my body to do things it doesn’t want to do. A lot of it is mental. I think it would have been very hard to do what we (Tim Hetherington, his partner in filming “Restrepo”) did without having a background as an athlete. Once you learn that trick of ordering yourself to do something that is painful, I was a long distance runner in college, once you learn that trick, it doesn’t really go away.
You tore your Achilles right? (on patrol in the Korangal Valley, Junger hurt his Achilles tendon, but still had to walk miles to get back to the outpost.)
I ruptured my Achilles, which wasn’t really a fitness problem, it can happen to anyone. I ruptured my Achilles on my second trip to the Korangal Valley. I had to crawl around for the next two weeks. Tim went back by himself, which was Oct, and 3 weeks later that’s when OPERATION ROCK AVALANCHE happened and Sgt. Giunta’s got his medal.
How did you maintain your safety without in a gun in the very dangerous Korengal Valley?
Well I’ve been to a lot of war zones without a gun as I can’t have one since I’m a journalist. Most the other places, I’ve been I was sort of on my own in a very chaotic situation like Liberia, Sierra Leone. Here I felt quite safe as I was with a very, very well trained unit. This was way easier than what I’ve mentally done before.
What does your wife think about all this? I know she must worry!
Yeah. She knows I’m going to be careful. I’m not going to be doing this thing over and over again. This was a very exceptional project, frontline situation. You don’t have to do that every time. I did it this time and I probably won’t do it again. She is really understanding. I wasn’t away for 15 months (like the troops he was following were) I was away month at a time which makes it easier.
I know your truck hit an IED, any other close death experiences? (the IED hit was captured on film).
We were in a lot of small arms fire and a lot of that is pretty random. Several times extremely close to me, so not sure if you can call that near death, but sure. But yeah it made me think for sure.
Do you feel sorry for the Al-Qaeda/ Taliban?
I momentarily feel sorry for those guys, but not the commanders who are making fully conscious choices and have a lot of options for them. The locals who fight for 5 bucks a day, they don’t have a lot of choices. So yeah I sometimes feel sorry for them.
What do you want your book “War” and documentary “Restrepo” to convey to your readers?
War is a very political thing. People have very strong opinions about it. What is lost in that intense debate is the soldiers’ experiences. When people see my movie, hopefully they see the spirit of the movie to understand the soldiers’ experience. The audience will hopefully leave their political experiences behind in the lobby of the cinema. Sit down and watch and spend 90 minutes in the reality of the soldiers in combat or understand their incredible efforts. Appreciate the soldiers, while having a political conversation in some other space.
Should we be in Afghanistan?
I’m a journalist, so I don’t make policy recommendations. I can list the upsides and downsides of every strategic decision our country has made. I can’t really boil it down to if we should or if we shouldn’t.
Were you seeing progress?
I mean I was there in 1996, but my god yes. Kabul was a bombed out ruin in 1996, but now it’s a pretty thriving city. It has cell phone towers, ATMS, certain amount of health care, etc. You can’t compare them.
What kind of reception are you getting from your movie Restrepo?
We have grossed over $1 million, which is huge for a documentary, any type of documentary, which is rare especially about a war. The soldiers have really liked it and recognize what we did. Civilians who have no connection to the US military have appreciated being able to look through the key hole to a world they will never experience directly. We have had an amazing reception. We won the Sundance best documentary award. It has been an incredible experience.
Any more documentaries up your sleeve you think?
Probably eventually. Not exactly sure when.
What are your ties to the military? How did you end covering wars?
I was covering wars long before my connection to the US military. I was a war reporter. I went to Bosnia in ’93 and kind of fell in love with the work and kept doing it. In 2005 I had my first experience with the US military when I was embedded with the US military in Zabul province and then I thought if that unit goes back I would follow one platoon for a deployment and that’s how I got the idea.
Covering war is very dramatic. It feels like if people don’t cover these wars, then the world won’t know how to make the decisions to stop them. Most of the wars I covered, they were ended by collective action: Sierra Leon, Liberia, Kosovo. In some ways you can say the civil war in Afghanistan was stopped as well by collective action. The level of violence in Afghanistan is at its lowest point in 30 years. People don’t realize that. What was going on in the 90s with the Soviets in Afghanistan pales in comparison to what is going on now in Afghanistan. One million civilians died in the 80s; 400,000 civilians died in the 90s under Taliban rule that ended with 9/11. Now with the NATO and US involved 30,000 civilians have died with 2/3 from Taliban attacks. Still as bad as it is, and I’m not saying this is acceptable, but this is as good as it has been since 1979 with civilian deaths.
So you plan to go back to Afghanistan and keep covering the war?
Yeah, I’m going back there to cover the civilian side and what might happen if NATO pulls out. People talk about it in a very cavalier way, but things will happen. I want to explain the changes to the Americans.
How has your book been received?
It has been received very well, sort of like the movie. The soldiers really felt it captured their experience. One of the guys from the platoon I wrote about said to me, “You’ve explained ourselves to ourselves.” That’s an incredible thing to hear someone say. I’ve had Vietnam Vets come up to me and thank me for telling their story. I am obviously writing about now, but they felt what they read in my book represented their experience 40 years ago equally well. I had an 80 year old gentleman come up to me after a talk I gave, I signed his book and he said, “Having heard you talk this afternoon, the first time I understand the feelings I had in Korea.” He then started crying and walked away.
You can catch Junger and Hetherington’s documentary “Restrepo” in limited theaters and it will be on DVD in November. http://restrepothemovie.com/screenings
Junger’s website to his book “War”: http://www.sebastianjunger.com/page/war-on-sale-now
Pics of the Korangal Valley: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1890204,00.html
