Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Sebastian Junger: War in Afghanistan

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah I'm very proud of that I've you know I did my first movie and I really saw it. I didn't see myself as a filmmaker. I saw myself out there as a journalist who had a video camera. And it really was just another facet of a journalistic project that I was engaged in. I wanted to know what it was like to be a soldier and in combat. I had the idea that that experience doesn't change much from war to war from century to century. And I wanted to understand it. War is a very political thing. It must be because it's such a terrible thing it has to get argued about and talked about. And people need to disagree about it because if we don't do that we'll go to war too easily. The soldiers are probably the only people in this country not thinking about the war in political terms. People really struggle to understand that the best analogy I can give is that policeman

I think very few talk about crime in terms of the socio economic conditions that produce it. I think they're busy fighting crime and trying not to get killed doing it that's very much where soldiers are at emotionally about war. Might my experience in war start in 1903 I went to Bosnia. I was a I was. I've been working as a waiter right up stairs at Casablanca. Actually and not very successfully. You can you can go go over there afterwards and ask the ask the owner will you remembers We will tell you I was not a good waiter. I went to Bosnia basically with a sleeping bag and a bunch of pens and no pokes and tried to figure out how to work as a freelance journalist and I did figure it out. And it gave me a very complicated relationship with war because when I went over there it was the most intense and in many ways the most gratifying experience that I've had in my life.

And it was such a terrible thing. And all the other journalists I knew felt the same way about it and it was very confusing. We finally watched NATO's forces in 1905 after three years of prevaricating after a quarter million civilian deaths. People who did not deserve to die. Women children old men NATO finally stepped in and bomb Serb positions around Sarajevo and started the end of the war. It ended very quickly after that the killing stopped. You know I grew up in the 80s Central America South America with a big liberal causes I'm as liberal as you get and the idea of civilian suffering was one of the very top of my list of personal concerns. And what I saw in Bosnia was the use of force the use of fighter planes to bring a halt to civilian suffering. And it gave me a very very cause I mean no one wants to feel good about the use of fighter bombers. But watching what was happening in Bosnia felt even worse. And it gave me a very complicated

relationship with the idea of using force. I think ultimately it's something that's necessary to protect people who can't defend themselves. We can have that conversation later if you want but I just just so that you know where I'm coming from. This book is not about that. It's not political. I really wanted to write a book that gave readers access to what it feels like to be a soldier. I was in the Korengal Valley six miles long in very steep mountains it looks like Colorado. There are big huge cedar trees in the upper ridges rushing rivers at the bottom of the valley. Absolutely beautiful. While I was there it was in the Hindu Kush Mountains right by the border of Pakistan and while I was there it was the scene of almost one fifth of all the combat in all of Afghanistan. Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne was was stationed there at a small base and so the hundred fifty men of battle company went through almost 500

firefights in their deployment they absorb a fifth of all the combat force 70000 neato soldiers in that country while I was there. It was very very intense. I did five one month trips to Tim sometimes together sometimes not trip by trip we got to know the guys better and better until we really were kind of part of the platoon. I'm happy to say it. I lost all objectivity about the war as a whole. My safety depended on them. My sense of. Of even even minimal like emotional comfort out there depended on my connection to those guys I had no objectivity. What was interesting to me was that was how my connection to those guys worked. It kind of mirrored what was happening between the men of the platoon itself and ultimately that was the point of my became the point of my book. The bonds that are formed in war

between men it was all men in the Korengal Valley and how those bonds affect the individuals. Everyone out there was almost killed. Every single guy including me every single guy out there could tell you about the bullet that almost hit him there were guys walking around with holes in their uniforms from bullets that had cut through the fabric but not touch them. I was leaning against the Hesco one morning as go as a sort of a wire basket that they sort of lined with some kind of fabric in you that you can fit like a huge sandbag eight by eight by eight and they filled it with sand and rocks to form a fortification. I was leaning against the Hesco one morning and you have to understand something about bullets that they travel much faster than sound so if someone shoots at you from far away you don't know they're shooting at you because you hear gunfire. That happens later. It's almost like a kind of footnote to the situation the way you know they're shooting at you. If they don't hit you

is the bullets produce a kind of strange snapping sound in the air as they go by. It's pretty subtle actually so you know we would get hit sometimes. And the first thing guys would do is kind of look at each other. What was that. Are we getting and then assume you know you're halfway through the sentence and you realize yes we are getting shot at and everyone dive for cover dives for cover. So I was leaning against the Hesco talking to someone and some dirt flew into my face and I had just time to think what the hell was that. And we heard the gunfire that from those those rounds it was you know the first round of the first burst of a firefight that lasted an hour and you know must have hit a few inches from my head. I mean it was close enough to spray my face with dirt that's almost getting killed. And it gave me a lot to think about and something like that happened every time I went out there and it happened to the guys who were stuck out there for 15 months. It happened to them regularly. In some ways it's a miracle that 80 percent of them weren't killed.

I spent most of my town time at an outpost called Restrepo. That's the name of our movie. It was named after the platoon medic one restruck always from Colombia the country of Colombia. He was shot in the throat during a patrol into the village of all your bod. About halfway down the valley the southern half of the valley was essentially controlled by the Taliban the northern half by the US. He was shot in the throat and he bled out. You know he was the medic. So there was no medic to help him. I don't know if he he may have been beyond help anyway but he bled out trying to tell the men around him how to save his life they couldn't do it. He was absolutely beloved within the platoon he was a great medic he was very brave and he was a really nice guy. And it destroyed those guys. Combat is traumatic in many ways. And I think I realize now that I know these guys so well after they came back the most traumatic thing about combat for them was the loss of their friends

the trauma of almost getting killed is nothing compared to watching your friend get killed nothing. And the thing is when that guy in the beginning of the movie when he said you know I've been on every kind of Stephenville they don't help that's all bad the nightmares are. Those are not nightmares about what almost happened to him. Those are nightmares about what happened to his friends. Guys he thought he might have been able to save and he couldn't. The situation the most painful situation to him was an American position was overrun on this hilltop. During a multi day operation. And he went sprinting up there to try to help the guys who were getting overrun. And by the time he got there one or two guys were down and one guy was dead. His name was Larry riddle. He was shot in the forehead and he was tormented by the idea that if he'd run faster he might have saved his friend Larry. I don't think he could've but he couldn't let go of the idea that was somehow his fault. And every night in his dreams he was running up that hillside trying to get there in time.

That was his nightmare. And he had it every night for probably a year. Restruck was a on the high ground south of the main base. Basically in war you try to get on the high ground and shoot down your enemy. That works best. And there was a lot of high ground around the main base and so at one point there were the Taliban were talking very effectively to the main base from this ridge to the south. So one night they sent two platoons up there with pick axes and shovels and of course their weapons and they started digging. They had sand bags there was no sand up there it's all rock so they chipped the rock out of the out of the. Out of the ridge with pick axes and filled sandbags with rubble and stacked them up and they worked all night long. And as soon as it got light they got hit. They threw down their tools and grabbed their guns and shot back and they did that until the shooting stopped and they started working again. And they did that nonstop for

24 hours. They were in something like 13 firefights that day. It was a two hour walk from the main base up there restruck it was. There was no running water so the guys would do a three to four week rotation never struck before coming back to the main base so they wouldn't they couldn't bathe for a month because they couldn't Bay they basically just lived in their clothes which basically started to get shredded by the vegetation by the rocks up there and basically just fall off them. There was no phone there was no Internet there was no way to talk to their loved ones their girlfriends or their wives their families. There was no cooked food. It was incredibly hot in the summer and swarming with flies fleas they all were flea collars. It was insanely hot cold in the winter. They built little plywood which is they're so cramped that in the little boy I lived I did everything they did except obviously carry a weapon. But I lived identically to them with them and from my

little bunk I could reach out with my arm touch three other men without too much difficulty. Tarantulas scorpions snakes. It was awful. All the things that young men like were not up there. I think I probably don't have to list those. And much of what people don't like was up there and they were up there for a year. The way they dealt with it one of the ways they dealt with it was with humor and just conversation. They would literally sit around and do something that I don't think. Men of their age have done in several generations they would just sit around and talk and they'd look up and watch the clouds go by and they would joke with each other and they became very very funny. They were incredibly funny. It was all men there were no women in the Korengal Valley I mean no among the U.S. forces. It was all men. They were very isolated they're 20 years old and their humor.

Was on the core side. But I'm going to at the risk of offending I'm going to read a little section about their humor. The guys are experts of a sort and being funny and they seem to go out of their way to be. Maybe it's the only way that to stay nice to stay sane up there. Not because of the combat. You're never saner than when your survival is in question but because of the unbelievable screaming boredom. OK who's going to die today. Was a standard one liner before patrols this incident. You were was very vulgar but incredibly morbid. And there was one guy named Anderson and unfortunately tragically two other Andersons had been killed in the Korengal and previous deployments. So Anderson and second platoon. You know the guys were just like Anderson I mean forget it you not make it out here like you guys

will give it you you know give me your lept laptop now because it's not happening. Hey Anderson what do you want on your tombstone I heard someone ask before we all headed down to Karen gall. Karen gall is the Korengal Valley. Karen gall was enemy village at the southern in the southern half and virtually every time we went down there we got we got hit. Now that's messed up Anderson muttered as he put out his helmet. Before patrols guys promised their laptops to each other or their new boots or their iPods one pair of friends had a serious agreement that if one of them should die the other would erase all the porn on his laptop before the army could ship it back to his mom. Mothers were an irresistible source of humor. If I start banging your mom we get home will that mean I'm your dad or some version of that was pretty much boilerplate humor it was struck once like once I watched O'Byrne over and was sort of the main character of my book. He was the only guy that got out of Second Platoon.

They got out of the army. Everyone else stayed in the army. About a third of the platoon platoon was like 35 men about a third of them. But tech guys are back in Kuwait or province fighting very close to where they had been in 0 7 0 8. Brendan got out I had a very good friendship relationship with him over there and it deepened stateside and the book doesn't focus on him but he's kind of the through line for it. He's the guy you follow. One Once I watched over and grab someone's ass and give it a good deep squeeze. When the man demanded an explanation O'Byrne said I'm just trying to get an idea what your mom's ass is going to feel like when we get home. Only wives and girlfriends are off limits because the men are already so riddled with anxiety over what's going on back home that almost nothing you could say would be funny. Anything else. Mothers sisters retarded nephews is fair game.

After it was all over I invited Brendan O'Byrne was back in the States and I invited him to a dinner party to meet so my friends and a woman asked him So you know as bad as it was out there was there anything at all that you missed about being out it was trouble and without a hint of irony. Brendan said. Yeah I missed almost all of it and I thought What an amazing thing. What a thing that needs to be answered how is it you can take a young man. Put him on a hilltop and almost kill him for a year kill his best friends deprive him of everything that's enjoyable in life. Inflict incredible hardships on him and then he comes home to the delights of civilization and after a few boozy weeks in there based inventions Italy so they came back to bitch and. Pretty much everything young man was right outside the gates of the base and after a few weeks of that most of those

guys wanted to go back to restructure. Why is that what is it that was happening out there that became so necessary to them so necessary to their sense of themselves their identity their sense of purpose. What is it that's not happening back home or at that base in Italy. They called Italy cowards land because men who had never been in combat could order around men who have been. That's even more true of civilian society back home. All the rules that kept them alive and kept them psychologically intact. All the. The rules of behavior the understanding that they had between each other you know as Brendan said once there there are men in the platoon who straight up hate each other but we would all die for each other. All those rules that kept them alive and sane out there not only do they not apply here they're actively dysfunctional. They will actively

get you in trouble. And what I wanted to do in my book is explain that thing that those young men were after well what was it out there that they were responding to. I think often society sort of dismisses it as well they got addicted to combat they're adrenaline junkies. I think the movie The Hurt Locker a movie which I thought in many ways was wonderful movie in this particular case it really aired in ascribing the desire to return from civilian life family life back into a situation where you'll probably get killed sort of the ascribing that to the adrenaline. That really is not what it is I think it's a part of what it is but a much more profound level. I think what the real drug we're talking about is the drug of brotherhood. The drug of human connection the drug of being absolutely necessary to 30 other men who are absolutely

necessary to you. Think about it a 19 year old who has does not have a very solid articulated place in society. And one thousand I certainly didn't I would think most 19 year olds don't. And then suddenly you put him in a place where he's absolutely necessary to go to his brothers where his job is absolutely clear. You know you're the 240 gunner and weapons squad and this is your job. It's it's not easy but it's simple and it's clear and it's unambiguous and you can completely reinvent you can combat this completely self-determining doesn't matter how you were born where you were born what your name is what your race is doesn't matter anything as long as you are. That you function well as a soldier and you protect your brothers out there. That's it. And as long as you do that you're at the top of the totem pole at least among those men. Imagine the emotional security of that situation how what a relief it would be for a 19

year old to find himself in a situation like that. All Finally I don't have to figure out who I am and how people feel about me. Take that give them that for a year and they come back to the society and all of a sudden their entire identity is up for grabs again. I think that is what is difficult for these guys. The the army back up fear is unavoidable in combat. It's unavoidable for soldiers it's unavoidable for the press. I've been covering wars for a long time in the one thing you really have to figure out is how to establish a relationship with your own fear because the fear is not going to disappear. And it shouldn't. When it does you get killed. But you do need a relationship with it where you are in control. So I became quite interested in how I experienced fear. I was

I was in a Humvee that was blown up. The footage of the very big I don't know if you caught it read the beginning of the trailer. We're driving along in a Humvee and suddenly everything goes orange for a moment that was me getting blown up by some miracle at the camp and have the camera running so we got it on film. We were stuck in that Humvee it was on fire we were taking fire we were choking on toxic smoke and we couldn't get out because we were worried about how much gunfire there was and we were stuck in there. And the captain finally gave the order to bail out and we did. We all got out OK but while we were stuck in there for a couple minutes. I had so little fear that I was actually worried I'd been hit. I thought I'd gone into shock. I remember saying to myself you have to get scared because this is a bad situation. Start taking you seriously. All the fear happened later. Later that night in combat fear at least I mean with virtually no exception. Fear was not an issue in combat. It was a big issue beforehand. The scariest I was

out there was before a big operation that seems scary. The night before dread is way worse than what people imagine to be the fear of combat at least for me and the guys I was with you sort of go into a kind of automatic You become sort of high functioning and an automatic in combat dread before head was was like it felt like poison in my bloodstream. And then afterwards the fear could play with your mind and all kinds of weird ways nightmares that kind of thing you get. We all got kind of jumpy. And you can obsess about the IED went off under the engine block instead of under me under us 10 foot difference. You can obsess you can obsess about three inches you can obsess about 10 feet. So I say in the book it just seemed appalling that so much could be determined by so little. So the military studied fear in their study courage obviously without courage soldiers couldn't function and armies would lose and sometimes they would lose

wars which they really need to win like war too. And I would argue this one but that's another conversation. But it's difficult to study courage because soldiers really don't acknowledge it. It's really interesting. You try to asshole it is about you know I mean I saw you know we were in a firefight once and a guy got injured and two guys ran out into heavy machine gunfire to drag him to safety he was fully in the open air bullets hitting all around and they didn't even hesitate they ran into the open grabbed him pulled him to safety and I tried to ask them about it later. A guy named Sergeant. He said you know that's not bravery I mean I did it because he would have done it for me in the fact that he would have done it for me is the only thing that makes any of this psychologically possible in the first place for a soldier running through gunfire to save your friend your brother your platoon mate doesn't require extraordinary courage. It's simply your job description as a soldier not to mention as a friend.

So when you try to tell a soldier that he was brave It's like telling a mother who ran into traffic to grab a kid from getting hit by a car try to tell that mother that she was brave. I mean no she was being a mother who was worried about her son. The same thing with soldiers like a mom in there with my buddy out there what was I supposed as I sit here behind a tree and watch him get shot. So it's quite hard to study. But I dug up a lot of old A lot of old research into how courage works. And it's kind of there it's the question I wanted to answer in my book like how does it work neurologically psychologically social logically. How do you get people in this case man to risk or sacrifice their life for someone else. It's kind of an extraordinary decision to make. I mean people make it reflexive with their children maybe with their spouses. But for another guy another day 18 year old guy it doesn't at first glance it doesn't seem to make sense Darwin would certainly say it doesn't make sense because the brave guy who threw himself on the

hand grenade. He's brave genes are not going to get passed on. And the less brave genes of everyone else in the bunker are going to get passed on so how does that work exactly. That's one of the things why my book goes into but here is just a sort of anecdotal that I found at one of these one of these studies where two guys would get wounded and they'd be brought back to a rear base hospital and as soon as they could they would go to a wall. They would literally sneak out the windows of the hospital and go in a wall to get back to the front line and rejoin their unit faster than the army would let them. That's the brotherhood that I'm talking about these guys were emotionally more comfortable under fire with their friends than they were in safety in the rear. I'm going to I'm going to finish with another brief passage.

You know take some you know take some questions. One night a few weeks later I'm sitting on the ammo hooch listening to the monkeys in the peaks a temperature inversion has filled the valley with mist and the mist is silver in the moonlight and almost liquid Airborne is airborne was the platoon dog he was. They got his a puppy from the Afghans the 173rd the unit that I was with. They're airborne infantry and as an airborne infantry they look down on all other infantry. They're qualified to jump out of airplanes with parachutes. The rest of the if no other victory is. And they call that everyone calls them legs. That's not a complimentary term. And so they were leaving the Corps and all in the next unit that was going to replace them was the first I.D. the 1st Infantry Division a leg unit. And so the guys names their dog airborne because Airborne was going to stay at the

outpost. So the first idea was going to come in and they were going to have to every time they called their own their dog they were going to be reminded of their endless inferiority compared compared to airborne troops. The Airborne is asleep but keeps popping his head up to growl at some threat impossibly far below us in the valley. There's been a big fight over by the Pakistan border an F 15s and 16s have been powering overhead all evening looking for people to kill. O'Byrne wanders out and we start talking his head is shaved but dirt sticks to the stubble so you can see where his hair ought to be. He says he signed a contract with the army that's almost up and he has to figure out whether to reenlist combat is such an adrenaline rush he says. I'm worried I'll be looking for that when I get home and if I can't find it I'll just start drinking and getting in trouble. People back home think we drink because of the bad stuff. But that's not true. We drink because we miss the good stuff. It's a stressful way to live but once it's blown out you're levels almost everything else looks boring.

O'Byrne knows himself when he gets bored he starts drinking and getting into fights and then it's only a matter of time until he's back in the system. If that's the case he might as well stay in the system a better one. And actually move upward. I suggest a few civilian jobs that offer a little adrenaline wilderness trip guide firefighter. But we both know it's just not the same. We are at one of the most exposed outposts in the entire U.S. military and he's crawling out of his skin because there hasn't been a good firefight in a week. How do you bring a guy like that back into the world. Civilians baulked and recognizing that one of the most traumatic things about combat is having to give it up. War is so obviously evil and wrong that the idea there could be anything good to it almost feels like a profanity. And yet throughout history men like Mac and rice and O'Byrne have come home to find themselves desperately missing what should have been the worst experience of their lives to a combat vet the civilian world can seem frivolous and dull with very little at stake and all

the wrong people in power. These men come home and quickly find themselves getting berated by a rear base major who's never seen combat or arguing with their girlfriend about some domestic issue they don't even understand. When men say they miss combat it's not that they actually miss getting shot at. You have to be deranged. It's that they miss being in a world where everything is important and nothing is taken for granted. They miss being in a world where human relations are entirely governed by whether you can trust the other person with your life. It's such a pure clean standard that men can completely remake themselves in war. You could be anything back home shy ugly rich poor unpopular and it won't matter because it's of no consequence in a firefight and therefore of no consequence. Period. The only thing that matters is your level of dedication to the rest of the group and that is almost impossible to fake. That is why the men say such impossibly vulgar things about each other's sisters and

mothers. It's one more way to prove that nothing can break the bond between them it's one more way to prove they're not alone out there. War is a big and sprawling word that brings a lot of human suffering into the conversation. But combat is a different matter. Combat is the smaller game that young men fall in love with and any solution to the human problem of war will have to take into account the psyches of these young men. For some reason there was a profound and mysterious gratification to the reciprocal agreement to protect another person with your life and combat is virtually the only situation in which that happens regularly. These hillsides of loose shale and holly trees are where the men feel not most alive that you can get skydiving. But the most utilized the most necessary the most clear and certain and purposeful. If young men could get that feeling at home no one would ever want to go to war again but they can't. So here sits Sergeant Brendan O'Byrne one month before the end of deployment.

Seriously contemplating signing back up. I prayed only once in Afghanistan. O'Byrne wrote me after it was all over. It was when Rhys trouble got shot and I prayed to God to let him live. But God Allah Jehovah Zeus or whatever a person may call God wasn't in that valley. Combat is the devil's game. God wanted no part. That's why our prayers were answered. The only one listening was Satan. So before I start the Q&A. The soldiers in their minds they are fighting for us. That's how they describe their job to themselves. They know that the war is very divisive back home there are people Fort people against it that's not a distinction this important to them. They're fighting for American citizens. And one of the problems I think in that paradigm right now is that the people who are doing the

fighting and the people that they understand themselves to be fighting for really don't have any way to communicate. So there's a lot of misunderstandings. The only medium they have to communicate through is the press and the press is freighted with all kinds of political baggage both left wing and right wing. And it doesn't work very well as a way of holding a conversation. So what I wanted to do is start that conversation in a way that bypasses the military bypasses the press bypasses the government and for that matter bypasses me. On my website it's very simple Sebastian Younger dot com very simple. There's a tab on the left that you can click on and as you read my book and say on page you know one twenty three. Sergeant McDonough does something that is you have a question about you have a comment on your choice about or you just curious how he's doing now he's McDonough still in the army.

Jones job as McDonough is in this country Jones is back over there. I want to ask Jones how he's you know what he did today how's it going. You can e-mail it you just click on his photo and send him an email and I promise you these guys are eager to hear from you that you are why they are there in their minds. They have a lot to say. And and I'm sure you guys have a lot to say to them. The one thing that I would say is to you is that they are not their experience in war is a very very personal and emotional one. It's not particularly a political one. So why what I would say is to keep your conversation with them on kind of human terms or emotional terms if you raise a very intense political point. You may get an intense political answer or not I don't know. But I I think there are jobs for the moment are hard enough as it is and they may not need that stress. So with that as a

caveat I hope you read my book and please communicate with these guys because they really truly are waiting to hear from you. So thank you very much. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you I really really appreciate that. So I hope I have some questions out there. Here's a live look right. There. We. Got. Up there for the right way so that we. Will be.

Well I mean I should say that he was a lieutenant the guy you to. Yeah I mean his you know the the captain or the or the battalion commander above him if they thought I was in for to have a journalist with a guy there'd be a journalist with him so he isn't isn't the last word on it. I mean you know the press there are good journalists and bad journalists there's a brace of journalists and not a face of journalists. Same with soldiers and we all get along sometimes or not. And I'm pretty good at fitting into a group of men and I don't know if I made a whole career out of. I mean you know when I was in Gloucester writing about the fishing industry that was a tough crowd to crack you know. And I've just there's ways to do it there's ways to be polite and direct and autistic people pick up on that and I was just out there so damn much I mean every time they turn around I was coming back out. And so after a while you know I got blowed up Tim broke his leg in combat and walked all night on a broken leg so as not to slow those guys down to slow them down would have been to really put them in danger. So just imagine what that night

was like for him coming out of the obvious car mountain on a broken leg. They soldiers understand that kind of thing and so after a couple of trips they realize I mean when journalists go out to see them they're only there once you know they never go back. We just kept going back and so we really became part of the platoon. I think partly just out of the milieu already in general about the embed program it's very controversial. I mean what people don't realize is that all of journalism is an embed program I mean you go to Liberia to cover the cover the Liberian civil war as I was in 0 3. Like it or not you're in bed with child soldiers fighting for Charles Taylor and you better be embedded with them because if you're not they could easily kill you. Any piece of experience in journalism that you that you commit is some form of embedding. And I think it is way better whatever the downsides are

fraternization sort of falling ill over the years topic it's hers that are I mean all that can happen anywhere. There's nothing special about the U.S. Army that predisposes people towards that. But whatever the downsides the upside is that the U.S. military is being monitored by civilians and ultimately can be held accountable for what they do wrong or for that matter and equally important praised for what they do right. And no one would know about any of it if there was a press out there. So you know when we were out there we had footage of everything American soldiers getting killed American soldiers crying about the ones who got killed. Civilian casualties from air strikes that went wrong. No one ever put a hand on our shoulder and said Put the camera down. It was pretty extraordinary and seriously. I can't think of another military in the world who gives that much access to the press so you know I'm just very I just very very grateful that in this country we have the kind of access I think is a really really

important. Yes sir. Thank you thank you. I didn't pay him to show up by the way this is I've never met this man in my life. You. Know. What. You're. Right. Where did you hear. That.

I think that's suicidal and impossible if he's shooting at you. I mean say it's a beautiful principle but you know I was almost killed out there like I didn't love those guys you know and they didn't love us like that war doesn't work that way. It really doesn't unfortunately. I mean if that worked there wouldn't be war but it doesn't it doesn't work. The only thing that kept those guys alive out there was that they shot back harder and faster than they were getting shot at. That's it. If they had stood up in the bunker waving their arms going stop stop stop they just would have been killed. So it's a beautiful idea. I don't think it it's realistic unfortunately. Yes ma'am. Oh.

Could you hear the question her father was in Vietnam and came back and never fully adjusted to it. What can be done. You know some problems don't have solutions. I mean I think things can be handled better or worse. And I think the military is learning how to handle returning veterans that are they get they're getting quite a lot of psych psychiatric care. They get a lot of counseling even when they're out there there was a brigade shrink that kept coming through the coracle trying to talk to guys you know in combat you don't really want to talk about your feelings because talking about them opens you up makes you vulnerable. And then you're less you're less safe. Ultimately you don't want to be in touch with your feelings in combat. And but I think the military is learning. I mean psychology psychiatry in general has come an awfully long way since the 60s so. But ultimately trauma. Is traumatizing I mean is I mean you have a you have a terrible car accident and you know your wife gets killed in the passenger seat next to you. I'm

sorry you're not going to get over it. That's like you know like you maybe shouldn't get over it and. I think the part that can be dealt with successfully is the part that I was talking about earlier if if our society can recreate as you make available a sense of brotherhood to guys who experienced it out there I think they'll feel a lot safer I have no idea how to begin doing that. It's just an idea but I feel that that would go a long way towards reducing the sense of dislocation and confusion when these guys come home. The platoon splits up and suddenly everyone's you know back in their hometown. You know a few years older thinking well what just happened. LIKE WHERE WHERE WHERE AM I. It's a very confusing thing to them. Yes sir. Ed hate to do it. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah I mean that was almost more of a literary choice combat. If I'd had called my book combat people would have looked at it and thought that it was one of those sort of like how to you know like military you know like I mean that was not what I wanted to do it to communicate. I wanted a book. I wanted a title I wanted a book that was as as universal and profound as possible. And even the word combat felt too specific. War is a blunt short ugly word. And that's kind of what I was looking for. So it was me it was really more of a literary literary decision than a kind of semantic one user.

Under that kind of pressure and stress on some of the guys break down. Yes they do. Absolutely. And one or two broke down and never put themselves back together and they were transferred to a unit that was not under that much stress and where they wouldn't get themselves or someone else killed. For the most part they reassembled themselves pretty effectively. Yeah one or two more OK let me go over there yes or. No thank you. But. Absolutely they do. They debate it they argue about it. And in the end of the day

almost always they follow orders. I'm sure once in a while they refuse to because they just can't bring themselves to. For the most part I think the orders are quite smart. I mean the officers that I met the guys coming up with the orders with the plans literally with out exception were incredibly smart guys the battalion commander had graduated from the Fletcher School and the toughs the company commander Captain Kearney incredibly capable smart guy lieutenants. I mean. I mean you know what I realized later is that the military is smart enough to know that you have to put the very best soldiers in the worst places because anything less would just get chewed up. So I this was not admittedly a representative sampling I mean this was the best of the best but they were incredibly good so most of the orders I think were fine but once in a while the guys really shake their heads about why the hell are we doing it this way. And that's a presents a confusing situation for a soldier and also they don't see the big picture like sometimes a

platoon is told to do something because it's in it for the platoon itself might look just crazy. But it's part of a bigger machine that's operating across the entire battalion and they just have to get to the top of that hill by noon. No matter how dangerous it is even though it might be safer to wait till dark but the rest of the battalion can't wait. And they go up there and so that's on the grounds. Some stuff looks incredibly stupid but the guys know that they don't have the big perspective and with the you know they're professional pawns. I mean that's what soldiers are and they know it and they're OK with it for the most part. So yes ma'am right there. That that's a great point. I I mean for me I mean

often people ask me like what the effect was on me and you know pretty predictable. I mean I came back a little jumpy You know I had the you know the usual nightmares and cetera I'd wake up. I live in New York and there garbage trucks go through it for the morning and they hit potholes. And when the big metal container at the back of the truck jumps in the air and comes out of the chassis it sounds exactly like a mortar. And boy what I had bedfast before I have you know that went on for a while. Those effects were kind of transitory the one effect that actually wasn't transitory but it was really quite positive like the experience out there not the trauma. The effect of being around these guys who are in such a tight group I think may be quite emotional like oh you know like I I I had real feelings about you know f'ing things I never had feelings about for you know like the typical like you go to I think a lot of young men goes through this year you go to a wedding you're in your 20s you go to a wedding and all the women are crying and you just like what the hell are they crying about

it. They're crying because they're moved right something of significance is happening in front of them and it's moving them right. I get that now. Like. What. I mean you know I'm 48 better late than never but. But. But it really something about what happened out there really kind of opened me up to the whole spectrum of sort of human connection and experience. And it had that happened with the other guys too I mean they were really puzzled like I don't know what's happening but you know I mean a couple of them said to me like we don't what's happening it's we're turning into girls like we're just crying all the time. And so I found out the term for this later. There's a term I didn't know called you know everyone knows post-traumatic stress disorder there's also something called post-traumatic growth and there are positive things that happen that come out of an ordeal like a year in combat. So you can we mustn't as civilians just decide oh

war is bad so everything that comes out of it every effect it has on human beings by definition has to be bad. That's really not the case. And I think it's very important in terms of incorporating these these soldiers when they come home back into society it's it's very important to understand the sort of the subtleties of all this because it gets very subtle. But it's all very important. So we just hit the 7 o'clock Mark thank you very much I really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you. Absolutely absolutely.