John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; WGBH Forum Network; Sebastian Junger on War

No one has ever accused our guest speaker Sebastian Younger of writing books that would cause his readers to yawn attracted since childhood to extreme situations and people at the edges of things he writes often about ordinary people and dangerous situations from his harrowing account of the Boston strangler who happened to work as a handyman in the younger's home in Belmont to his white knuckle chronicle of the crew of the Andrea Gail and his best seller The Perfect Storm and now he has set his focus using what one reviewer calls a laser not a floodlight on how modern warfare is experienced by those who do the fighting. Over the course of 15 months Mr. younger and photojournalist Tim Hetherington were embedded with Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade combat team in the Congo Valley in eastern Afghanistan a remote outpost that saw more combat with the Taliban than any other region of that war torn country and was deemed at the time the most dangerous place on earth. The result is his newest book War a story about war that is much

more than a war story. What elevates war out of its particular time and place writes One reviewer or the author's meditation on the minds and emotions of the soldiers with whom he has shared hardships dangers and spells of boredom so intense that everyone sits around wishing to hell something would happen and wishes to God it was over when it inevitably does. If you are like me you often learn more about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from Bob Herbert's columns than through the direct reporting from his colleagues overseas a veteran himself drafted during the Vietnam War and serving in Korea. He decided to be a journalist after returning from his experience in the military. He has won numerous awards for his reporting and commentary including the right and Howard courage Prize for his fearless articulation of unpopular truths and we learned earlier this evening that he is the hero of Sebastian younger's mother who is here in the front row as well. There are many reasons to have this forum here today on Veterans Day not the least of which being that this institution

honors the memory of a World War II veteran turned president but less well known as the fact that we also has the papers of Ernest Hemingway whose experience of war as a young man informed many of his most famous novels and short stories at the Hemingway Centennial held here in 1999 Tobias Wolff suggested that Hemingway's great war work deals with aftermath with what happens to the soul in war and how people deal with that afterward. The problem that Hemingway set for himself and stories like soldiers home Wolf concluded is the difficulty of telling the truth about what one has been through. He knew about his own difficulty in doing that and Sebastian Younger we have with us this evening. One of the great writers of our time an artist of Hemingway's proportions. One reviewer writes that Mr. younger's book on war refracts our vision we see in it the good in us and regret that we are not better or as Dexter Filkins has written in this new book. Younger is aiming for more than just the boots on the ground narrative of the travails of fighting wars strives to offer

not only a picture of American fighting men but a discourse on the nature of war itself. This is no small ambition. He writes some beautiful sentences about this ugly world. Ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming back to the Kennedy Library. Sebastian Younger than Bob. It's a great honor for me to be asked to participate in this program. This is an issue that is so close to my heart has been for so long. And I can tell you right off that. War is just a terrific book. And Restrepo is an equally terrific film. So we'll get started. I have a lot of questions and there's going to be a period for you guys to ask them questions so let's go and Sebastian you can orient us by. Describing this project and just how it got started. Sure.

I've been going to Afghanistan since 1996 96 2000 2001 when the Northern Alliance to Kabul. It looked like a very easy war in 2001. The Afghans were the ones I talked to were. Incredibly grateful to. The United States to be rid of the Taliban they hated the Taliban. The Taliban crumbled in a couple of weeks. And I mean this is my opinion here but I think it was such an easy victory that the focus of the United States particularly the Bush administration just wandered and. Refocused on Iraq. And while we were focused on Iraq Afghanistan just fell apart. 19000 American soldiers was not enough to keep it glued together this 40000 cops in New York City it wasn't going to work. And by 2005 I realized. Wow the military of my country is going to be in Afghanistan in this country that I've kind of fallen in

love with probably for a very long time. And if it doesn't work the Afghan people are going to go through another convulsion of violence and chaos and nihilism just like the 90s. And so I decided to embed with a unit of U.S. military I was with Battle Company of the 173rd. And you know I grew up in the wake of Vietnam. I the military had a very complicated frankly troubled reputation then and I didn't know what to expect and I was just. Overwhelmed by these guys that I was with. How professional how great they were. I just love them and I thought. If they if this battle company of the 173rd goes back to Afghanistan I want to fall one platoon for a whole deployment. They were supposed to go to Iraq. At the last moment they changed they went to Afghanistan they went to the Korngold Valley. And I had my chance. I wanted to write a book and make a movie. I'd been shooting a little bit of video.

That was the plan. I was good and I was going to go over there as much as I could afford to and my personal life back home. I wound up doing five one month trips to the Cornwall Valley. Most of it spent at this small outpost called Restrepo. First tell us roughly how many men there are in a platoon and also give us an idea of who they were. Just basically the range of ages and their backgrounds. A platoon is about 30 35 men. The Cornewall was six miles long battle company basically had four platoons about 150 men American soldiers in the Corps and all. The age range guide. The youngest guy was 18. He came in January. He was a replacement. And.

He was just he was 18 he seemed 14. He turned into a very good soldier but that took a couple of months. The oldest guy was 42. He was a pretty successful guy. He was bored back home. He owned a small business. I think he sold that he got out. I think he was divorced I can't remember his details but he was bored. He decided he wanted to join the army. And so he joined at 40. And you know 18 months later he's on a hilltop. Getting shot at and I was 45 at the time so I was the oldest oldest person that Restrepo. The soldiers you know what 18 20 year olds are like anything over 30 years you're you know they don't even realize why you're bothering to continue you know. So I was trying to explain to them that it actually was worthwhile if any like that there was something on the other side or you see we

have a clip from the film and then have a couple of questions about the film itself. So if we show that clip. Yes. No I don't I'm not sure if I did it because you know how can I move on. I prefer not sleeping not talking about it than sleeping in my head. They're always like oh you know and they feel sorry for you. The last place on earth is the Congo Valley. We're not ready for the taking in what we do.

Sure strong losses restrengthen where Restrepo died and shot off flares in the middle of the night. We put up a fire base. We realized once they could not be a stretcher we had the upper hand. Urge you to do that is my audio can you hear me. I had an audio problem where I'd been on of sleeping pills and told how I said that and I'm not sleepy not about it. So you can see the tissue in my head. They're like oh you know and they feel sorry for you. This

place on our go Valley we're not ready for taking what we do is. First round losses where we strap on and we shot flares in the middle of the night we put up a fire. They realized once they could not knock off pure shrapnel we had the upper hand in. It takes a little bit every time you see your boy you get hurt. It's really like a big family. You guys want you guys to get over it. Months and counting down I just don't like the way it is only. A bunch of bad guys in the same incident song. He killed five people. I need to know better too that I'm not sure these people. All fired up. Yes.

Nobody's going to help you here in No Man's Land is always safe especially when you can't see what's coming at you. Are you going to go back into Somalia. Well I have no idea. I still obviously haven't figured out how to deal with it inside. The only hope right now is that eventually I'll be able to process it differently. I'm never going to forget it. I don't want to not have that as a memory because that was one of the most recent makes me appreciate it. David. Now the film starts with footage of some of the men on their way to Afghanistan and you were with them then. What were their attitudes like.

I mean were excited anxious fearful. Actually the first bit of footage is on a train in Italy they're based in Italy in Vienna and that's one of the very very small parts of the movie that we didn't film that was just stuff that they had filmed. We didn't know those guys yet. And so that was put as we got from them it was a little one type camera. But I can speak to their attitudes. They're in the 173rd Airborne. That's a combat unit and every guy that I was with at least in battle company had to work very very hard and has a lot of tests to get into a unit like that. You know they would say to me Look if you just need a paycheck. You can change the oil in a Humvee and a rear base pretty easily. You can volunteer for the Army and do that to get into a combat unit. You actually it's like making the football team you actually kind of have to want it. And so those guys when they were going over there. In May 0 7 the big war was Iraq and they were going to Afghanistan and there were quite a few of them. Their main worry was that they were not going to see any combat.

They were yeah that they were going to be disappointed. They're going to Afghanistan rather than Absolutely they were like were trained to fight and that's going to be a really long year. We're just sort of sitting on sandbags watching you know watching the clock turn slowly. Right. So they were. That was one of their anxieties that they were going to spend a year over there not actually coming home with any combat experience. Turns out they didn't have to. They did not have to worry about the day when they did show up in the Congo Valley at least some of the men seemed taken aback or maybe they were the young fellow. We heard in the clips they you know what are we doing here. And there was another fellow who said his mind told him as he looked around the landscape that he was going to die there. What was it that was so intimidating about that place. It was very very rugged terrain. It was like they dropped those guys in the Colorado Rockies and the previous deployment.

I think probably half the unit had been on the previous deployment in 0 5 0 6 and Zabul Province which is kind of this moonscape and that was where I'd been with them two years earlier. So they get dropped into essentially the Colorado Rockies and these guys are carrying minimum minimum on the shortest patrols and carrying 80 pounds. Up to 120 on multi-day patrols that carry 150 160 pounds. So you know when you look at some mountains like the Cornewall it's the it's the it's part of the Hindu Kush mountain range. When you look at those mountains they look very different. If you're just running around in them or you're carrying 150 pounds it's completely different and they knew it and they knew they were going to have to walk around. With those kinds of loads while fighting. And they just they understood how hard it was going to be. Now you and the photographer Tim Hetherington.

You guys were right with them when you're over there and you had an experience yourself. I mean the vehicle you were traveling in was hit with a roadside bomb an IED. So I can tell you it's true that in the film when I was there. So tell us about that. Yeah we had a lot of experiences that were deeply frightening. You know the. Thing about combat is that it's so random. I mean one of the best soldiers out there sorry Larry Wrubel was killed. And there were guys who you know like Vaughn who showed up age 18 didn't had no idea what he was doing and he got out of it OK. And and they all knew that. And then as a journalist if you're out there and if you start to realize it like wow this is rare. Among other things it's completely random. You know in a firefight I had a I hate telling the story with my mom here I haven't done this before but I'll proceed.

Plug your ears. I you know I had a I was a very very quiet day at Restrepo and nothing much was happening and I was leaning to get some sandbags and some dirt flew into my face. And you have to understand is that bullets go much faster than the sound of a gunshot. So if someone's shooting at you from a few hundred yards from a quarter mile. Down. The way you know you're getting shot at at first is that you hear this really bizarre and pretty subtle snapping sound and it's bullets breaking the speed of sound by your head. And then the gunshots come afterwards. So when you get ambushed the first thing that happens is everyone turned looks around with a frown on their face like are we getting shot at. Like that's the first time. And then you hear that and it's clear. Well what happened was. A bullet it hit next to me against the sandbag it was the first round of the first burst of an hour long firefight and it sprayed dirt in my face and I had no idea what it was. I was like What was that. That's random. And once you

realized how random it is. You don't really psychologically you don't know what to do. Like do I sit here or here like should I like it cause everything it's like kind of an existential crisis it calls everything into question. So with the IED. The footage that you saw there of the bomb going off under the Humvee that was me. Was this some footage that I shot and. It was really pretty traumatic because. It's hard to explain but none of us were hurt. We were fine physically and for the next few hours I was just on this weird high like I could barely sit still. I was so excited. Sort of I don't know I was just completely amped up. And that night I just crashed and I got incredibly depressed. I didn't get scared. I got sad. I got sad about the whole thing. And it's very easy to sort of sit here in this country and say oh war is such a sad

thing it's very easy to say that it is sad but you kind of know that. And at least I know that in an abstract intellectual way the experience of war is many things. It's scary. It's exciting. It's profound. It's disturb whatever it's every human emotion that's what war is. But the sadness about it is it's a subtler thing and it immediately when you're over there that sadness immediately gets sort of trampled by these more robust emotions like fear and excitement. You don't get in touch with the sadness while you're there except occasionally. And I did that night. I just had this sort of again this sort of existential sort of moment of like oh my God there's at 150 young men all of whom I care about tremendously. Fighting a couple of hundred young men who are on the other side who I would probably care about if I got at least some of them or I got to know them like what are we doing this is so sad. It just it was just sort of heartbreaking. That feeling went away

immediately as soon as we got attacked again it disappeared. Was not interested in the sadness. I was interested in not getting hit by a bullet and going home. But for a while and they gave me terrible terrible dreams for a while that was like my first real moment of it was kind of a moral and our moral it's kind of a spiritual crisis almost as a war reporter sort of started that night. It lasted for a little while. He explained what Restrepo means. Why the film was called Restrepo and the importance of Restrepo to these. One Sebastian Restrepo his middle name was Sebastian was the platoon medic. He was born in Colombia the country of Colombia immigrant to this country I think that's worth noting in this. Today with all of the conversations about immigration we should we should remember that people who have immigrated here are dying for this country.

Just throw that in there. I he was Restrepo was the platoon medic and they were on a routine patrol down to a village called alibied and he was hit in the jaw and throat and he was bleeding out and he was the medics so there was no medic to treat him. He was the medic. So he was in the middle of this firefight. He was you know they were ambushed pretty badly and he was telling his guys around him how to save his life. And they they couldn't do it. And he died. And he was just beloved within the platoon. He was just a great guy. And everyone loved him and he died. And it was just devastating. I think the main trauma of war at least for the guys I was with wasn't almost getting killed. It was the loss of their friends that the grief of losing their friends transcended. I think every other trauma. Combined out there.

So a couple of months a month a month later. They decided to build the an outpost. On this ridge that the enemy was using to shoot down into the company headquarters. If you're if you if you need if you ever any ever need to fight a war. One thing you need to know is that it's better to shoot from high ground into low ground than the other way around. That's like the basic like tactic in war. And a lot of war consists of like carrying really heavy stuff up to the top of the hills and shooting down at your enemy like that's basically war. So the battalion commander the company commander decided to put an outpost on this ridge that the enemy was using to fire into the company headquarters and so at night. Second and Third Platoon walked up this ridge two hour walk from the main base. They walked up this ridge there with their two picks pick axes and shovels and their weapons and they started hacking away at the rock. There was no sand up there to fill sandbags so they

just had to wait the rock with these pick axes. And worked furiously all night so that they'd have some protection in the morning because they knew they'd get attacked. The first day the enemy came at them attacked them 13 times. Were 13 firefights that day they worked straight for it and fought it straight for 24 hours. And they're fighting and digging. Building this outpost. Yeah. With 100 plus degrees their body armor. I mean just you know working working like a chain gang up there. When they got attacked that was actually a relief because they could lie down. Drink some water. Shoot back. It was a relatively relaxed compared to what they're doing. And they built this outpost and it works. It blocked the enemy from attacking the main base. But just to describe it briefly. It was sandbags. They called the rock bags because that's filled with rock bags and ammunition and Emory's. That's all they had up there. There was no running water. They couldn't bathe for a month at a time. Because they couldn't bathe. They.

Didn't change their clothes because they didn't change their clothes. They didn't get out of their clothes they just wore their clothes and they fell off. They went on patrol they come back. Clothes were dry. You know they glide and go to sleep get up in the morning do it again a month at a time. They go back to the comfort they walk back to the company base get a shower. There was no Internet no phone at Restrepo. So once a month they could call their girlfriends or their wives and get a shower or they get a hot meal. There was no hot food up there and there were you know my first or second day at Restrepo we were attacked four times. Like it was just it got absolutely hammered by the enemy. They were up there for a year. The. Goal was to one of your goals. Was to bring home to civilians here in the United States the real life soldiers in combat under these. Extraordinary stressful conditions. So if you could sort of you started doing a little bit of it in talking about

the outpost. But a little more about. The daily lives of these soldiers and then we'll talk about what it was like in combat. What was it like living out there for them. It was for 14 or 15. Yes. OK so. They as it got colder they built these plywood hatches. They were so narrow so cramped that everyone had a little bunk and I had a bunk. And from where I slept I could reach out and touch three other men. No problem that's so cramped they work. It got very very cold in the corn gall and you know subzero at night just unbelievably cold. And so they had these little gasoline heaters which are cooked. The people they were next to them and everyone else froze. And so these hunches were there. I mean it was I mean you can imagine how they smelled. It was just the machinery of war. It was guns. It was hand grenades. It was

you know Playboy magazines you know pinned to the walls. It was dirty fatigues belts of ammo. I mean it was just like this crazy deadly locker room and everyone go to sleep you wake up in the morning and. You know the guys took guard duty two hour shifts. I didn't they threaten to make me wish I didn't have to. And so some days nothing happened you just hung out. And other days probably every other day they'd send out a patrol. I did every patrol that I could. The reason that they would send out patrols is that if you just sit on a base the enemy will attack you and overrun you. They put your safety in a situation like that. Depends on the enemy not quite ever knowing exactly where you are. So they'd send out a patrol at midnight. Right. And so we'd go out and we'd creep off down the valley take up a position somewhere watch that enemy held village. We'd stay out there

for. Three hours or six hours or 24 hours or one hour. They always varied it and they always went to a different place. So they were constantly sending out these patrols and the Taliban would find out OK. While the patrols over there now it's over there today. They didn't send one out today or did they. The Taliban never quite knew what they were doing and that was that was where our safety lay. So you never knew like someday you just might be sitting around and the guys smoked cigarettes and nothing happened other days you might be you might leave at midnight on a 24 hour walking patrol and get back at midnight the next night could just completely utterly exhausted. You never knew. So now in these periods when. They're not engaged in combat. Extended periods of time. What were their attitudes like. I mean did they have fun. Were they bored where they riddled with anxiety. What was that like for them. They were all of those things.

All the attacks came when you least expected it. That's almost the definition of an attack like the enemy doesn't attack when you expect them to attack. It's stupid. So every day there was no peaceful moment because at least somewhere in your mind you knew. Two seconds from now we could be in a massive firefight. There was an outpost called ranchhouse Jozen company one valley to the north. They got attacked 20 men 20 man outpost. They got attacked by 300 Taliban fighters. The enemy just like that at 4:00 in the morning boom said the guys were fighting in their underwear they were throwing hand grenade. They were coming out of their hutches in their underwear throwing hand grenades because the enemy was inside the base. The Taliban had taken over half of the base. They were inside the American bunkers using using American weapons to shoot into the other half of the base. That could happen at any moment and you knew it. And as one of these guys said to me some of the scariest stuff out there never

happened. It was the stuff we were scared of and your fears could drive you crazy and you didn't even need to have an attack to experience all the fear and anxiety of what could happen five minutes from now. So that was the base layer. Psychologically you know above that there was incredible amounts of boredom. I mean three four days could go go by without a firefight and the guys maybe a week even. And the guys were just. They'd be sitting or sitting around praying for combat. Like farmers pray for rain in a drought you know because you have to understand there's nothing that young men like is out there. You know there's no girls there's no alcohol there's no TV there's no sports there's absolutely nothing to do except fight. And so if you take everything else away. And the most intense thing you've ever experienced in your life. Including you know whatever happened with your girlfriend back in high school the most intense thing you've ever experienced is

combat and nothing else is happening. You're going to you're going to wish for combat. It's a very complicated thing. And in their boredom. I mean you know as you all probably know like if you take men and you separate them from the women and children and you put them on a construction crew where you put them on a fishing boat or you put them in an outpost. They get very very vulgar and they get very very funny. And those guys were both things to a degree that I really I think can't really even quite describe. Now talk a little bit about your guys and Sequim Patou in combat. Well. There's sort of two different kinds of combat. There's there's the sort of easy fun kind where you're attacked in a place where you have good cover basically the outpost.

So if you weren't actually getting overrun like ranchhouse if it was just a standard attack on the outpost there was great cover everywhere and the guys got off to you know got to you know shoot off a lot of ammunition at these barren hillsides where they you know knew the Taliban were were were hiding and shooting from that they liked. And it's not very complicated. You know what's much more complicated is when you're ambushed in the open. And the enemy is maneuvering on you. That kicks off a very complicated it's almost like a football player. Like OK the 240 gunner lays down suppress and the saw gunners lay down suppressive fire while one squad maneuvers to get behind cover to get a better position. That squad starts to lay down fire and then another squad moves and it's a it's a very kind of complicated choreography and it's all being run by the lieutenant who is on the radio with the main base telling them where he thinks they're getting hit from so they can drop mortars on those positions. Sometimes

they drop drop white phosphorus which would send up these incredible clouds of white smoke which would obscure the Taliban gunners vision. Like you they can't you can't shoot through smoke you don't know where you're shooting at that would allow the platoon to get to a better place. And that's terrifying being shot at in the open where you don't have any cover even if it takes you three seconds to get to cover those three seconds are absolutely horrible. And what it means is that every time you're walking around. On patrol every time you're you know it's it was there were holly trees and boulders and stuff but you'd be walking areas where maybe from here to there you know there's a boulder here and there's a tree there and you got 10 feet to cross. Every time you walk those 10 feet on every single patrol you think if we get hit right now I'm screwed. And then you get to that tree and you're fine. And that it again it's this sort of existential crisis like oh my god I'm wide open. Ok now I'm not. Now I'm wide open to get in and guys see patrols they see walking basically as.

Am I behind something or not behind something. That could really drive you crazy but they don't. They don't freak out. I mean they're under fire. They're firing back. They're taking cover. When they when they can but they don't lose it. They don't become hysterical. They continue to function professionally and effectively. How is it that that comes to be. There are several reasons. I mean they're very very effective. They're incredibly self-possessed. I mean there were guys who literally were you know were watching bullets hit hit around them and were continuing to fire continuing to function. There were guys who had bullet holes in their in their fatigues you know from rounds that didn't hit them and cut the fabric. So there's different reasons. One is that their safety. Comes from their ability to function. If if if

it's really simple if someone is shooting at you. You cannot stick your head up and aim and shoot back effectively. So basically the person who puts out the most firepower accurate firepower. Starts to control the conversation between the two sides. The conversation in. Bullets between the two sides decide the puts out more firepower controls that conversation. And once you have control of the conversation you can move and you get behind cover and then everything starts going your way. So they know that if they stop firing suddenly the enemy controls the conversation. All this firepower is coming in and you can't even stick up your head to shoot back. They know that. OK. The other thing that they know it's drilled into them is that a you know I don't do my job. I'm on the radio. My job is to communicate with help the lieutenant communicate with the base. If I don't do my job we don't get mortars we get pinned down. Someone gets killed. My best friend gets killed. I can't

live with that my whole life. I'd rather I'd rather be dead. So I'd rather I'd rather risk dying or I'd rather die than live out my life knowing that my best friend died because I didn't do my job. The thing they feared most was causing the death of a brother as they call each other brother. So here what's the choice. You're a 19 year old saw gunner and you know you're your team leaders telling you to lay down suppressive fire because your buddies in the wide open getting hammered and you need to get behind cover and you're like no I'm just going to stay behind this tree and not shoot back because that's not conceivable. And so they don't think of it as bravery. They just think of it as. Look it's my friend it's my brother. This is what soldiers do. And then he would do the same thing and that guy would do the same thing. And I mean Brendan the guy I got closest to out there. Brendan O'Byrne he said to me at one point he said you know it's crazy the guys in the platoon who straight up hate each other but we would all die for each other. And I thought about that

sentence for a long time but I thought about this sort of related things like why is it that that men come back from war and battle company of all men that. There are no women in that unit. There are no women in combat units I believe. Why is it that they can come back from war such a terrible thing and miss it. What is it they miss. Do they really miss almost getting killed. Probably not. They miss killing. Probably not. What is it they miss. And I started to understand it. They miss the brotherhood. You can't. Brotherhood is not available in civilian society. Friendship is but friendship is a function of how you feel about a person what you do for a friend depends on how you feel about that person. You don't like someone you're not going to die for him you probably won't even lend. Ten bucks right. In combat in this brotherhood It has nothing to do with how you how you feel about the other person. It's a brotherhood that has nothing to do with feelings.

It's a shared agreement or reciprocal agreement. I'll risk my life for you and I know you'll risk your life for me. It has nothing to do with whether I pissed you off. Pissed you off yesterday. I like what you don't want in combat. It's a wonder if the guy you upset yesterday is actually going to like cover for you with a fire if you don't want to have to wonder that. That's how Brotherhood works. It removes those sort of messy interpersonal relationships. From the agreement to all protect each other with. Your own your own life and. Just a sort of final note on that. I started to think like for a 20 year old. Like a 20 year old guy 19 year old guy you're basically at the bottom of the food chain socially like girls are all dating all the guys who can't get a job. You're like you're you're really sort of you don't have a lot going and. The things that you are

valued for you have no control over them like if you're born good looking that's great that makes High-School you know pretty nice time but you have no control over that. If your dad has a good job if you're wealthy family whatever. At 19 you have control over those things. So the way society sees you the way women see you the way your peers see you. Depend on things you have no control over. Now you go into combat. And you're completely self-defining. Like in a platoon in a situation like that. Nobody cares if you're ugly or good looking what your dad does for a living. They don't care about anything except that whether you're a good soldier don't fall asleep on guard duty and be prepared to risk your life to save my life. That's it. And. Courage is a choice. It's not something you're born with it's a choice. So all of these guys no matter how neglected and disempowered or whatever in society in combat they can be exactly the person they want to be. Not all of them rise to that but it's at

least available to them and they're part of that brotherhood. Now for a 19 year old what a secure place to be emotionally psychologically. Imagine. And then they come back and all of a sudden they're judged for these things that are now out of their control. They have friends but they don't know the depth of that friendship is it profound or is it shallow. All these things are suddenly variable and it makes civilian life actually in a weird way more threatening psychologically threatening than the worst combat situation. The. It's a big deal. One of the fellows in your unit Sal Giunta is going to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor next week. I mean that's incredible. So. And you wrote in detail about the. Engagement and I guess in which he displayed such bravery and he's going to get this medal.

So what can you tell us about that. When I was out there the enemy started to figure out ambushes how to do them. And they got better and better at them. So there's an operation called Operation Rock Avalanche. They overran American positions up on this ridge. They killed started Larry. Wounded two other guys grabbed their gear their weapons their ammunition there. One of their rucksacks. I mean it was they were right on literally on top of those guys. And they made off with them. That's hard to do. Good soldiers. They did it in a few days later on the last day of that operation. First Platoon I was with 2nd Platoon first platoon. I didn't know those guys as well. And I knew them as well. First Platoon was up on this ridge providing what's called overwatch. They have the high ground. Everyone else is going back out of their positions towards the base when you're leaving an area you're at your most vulnerable. So they always have someone left behind to watch everyone else.

And then once everyone else is in position those people watched the last unit to expel. Well first platoon started to expel infiltrate exfiltrate they started to ex-MIL at night they got to go Spurr and they were walking down on the top of this ridge. And the enemy had set up in an L-shaped ambush like if you want to ambush somebody. And you put a bunch of your guys on one side of the trail and a bunch of the other rescue guys on the other side of the trail you just kill each other don't do it that way. L-shaped ambush. That's what it sounds like. You have to live like that and you're not shooting at each other you're just shooting at the enemy. And first platoon walked straight into an L-shaped ambush. They walked into 15. 15 fighters with RPG is. Heavy lifting heavy machine guns and. From distances of like 30 40 feet very very close. The entire first squad got hit immediately. The entire lead squad got hit within seconds.

And. Started just bread and was in the lead he was walking point. And so what these guys did they did exactly what I was talking about before they laid down this massive I mean imagine they walked at night into an ambush and they managed to not all get killed. They laid down this massive firepower. Everyone did what they were supposed to do. They started throwing hand grenades and running towards the front of the line because they knew the guys in the lead would have been in trouble because they were taking the brunt of this. It got to the second guy in line and his friend Josh Brennan is missing. And he keeps running and throwing hand grenades. He gets hit by bullets in his plate his vest he runs and he finally sees his friend Josh being carried off by two enemy fighters at night on a ridge at the southern end of the Cornewall Valley dragged off alive. And he killed the guys who were carrying them. And he rushed up and Brennan had been hit eight times. And he sat with him and started to treat him and protect him

and they brought in a medivac. Tragically Josh died on the medivac. But Sal. Sal Giunta. Within a couple of months there was talk that he might be up for a Medal of Honor. And I talked to him about it when I was out there. He was very very conflicted and ambivalent about that he was really very uncomfortable with the idea of getting a medal. He's like look Josh is my friend. You're going to give me a medal for trying to save my friend. Like don't call that bravery. That's friendship like I mean we almost felt kind of insulting to him and it all seems like everyone was brave. I was just the guy who got to Josh but I wouldn't have gotten to Josh if everyone else hadn't been doing just as heroic things to help me out. Like don't just give me a medal. Everyone's going to hate me. You know like. And he said give the whole platoon a medal but don't single me out. C'mon I didn't do anything. I did what everyone else did. He was really conflicted about it.

At any rate the medal was approved and it will be awarded to him next Tuesday in Washington. I'm going down for that to be with him. I actually in addition to Restrepo Tim and I directed a short film 40 minute film on Genta because we had a lot of footage of him and the combat and all that. So it's on our Web site. So if you want to watch it it's it's pretty interesting. RESTREPO the movie come. If you if you're interested in Sal He's an amazing amazing young man. I think I said it sounds from the second opportunities from the first two sounds from first platoon and company they're all from battle come first platoon is like a little Thea you know one of the biggest things that I took away from the book and the film was what I think of as the sort of the. Maddening ambiguities of the mission and it's never clear what the guys were. It was never clear to me at least what the guys were supposed to be doing their second platoon is a very small unit.

They're not responsible for taking over a lot of territory. They had very little contact with the local population. So it's not their job to win over hearts and minds. Is is it really that ambiguous. And to to what extent do the guys themselves know what their purposes be there. OK. I'll just explain it from the top down. Second Platoon is job. Like that. The roles in the military are very narrow and closely defines right. Second Platoon job was not to win hearts and minds or win the war in Afghanistan or a second platoon job was to protect the main base like it's very very literal like they're shooting at us from that ridge. We need to own that ridge 2nd Platoon. That's your job now with the main base there. Captain

Kearney was in charge of you know quote hearts and minds. And so the weekly meetings with the with the locals with the elders of each village happened on the main base. In. The main base kept getting attacked those meetings would not happen there would be no relation. You know the whole thing sort of falls apart. So second platoon the men of second platoon did not have sort of like anguish sort of debates about what are we doing here. Like they knew what they were there to protect base and and then say like but you can take that it's an infinite regression like you. OK. So why was that base there. Why was the cornball outpost the company headquarters in Cornwall. The core of all that matter is six miles long. It didn't matter. It didn't matter in and of itself. And right now I'm explaining to you military logic I'm not giving you my point of view. I'm not saying it's right or wrong I'm just explaining to you the rationale in military terms for the decision to put men in the corps and that's it. The base was there because it was a very very good place for the

insurgents to to use as a launching point for attacks further north. It was a perfect Valley for these insurgents to use. And the Korngold didn't matter except as a base for the insurgents and the insurgents. What they were attacking out of the Cornewall was the Pesh River Valley in the past actually kind of did mattered did matter. It was a big population center. There was a lot of Commerce a lot of agriculture. It was a major transit route into Nuristan. The Americans were paving a road you know with a road comes security government access rule of law like the first thing they do is paved the roads and then you can get all these other. Aspects of society into these remote areas and then the local. I mean this is again this is military theory. Then the locals have it. They have access to trade goods they can sell their crops. Outside of their little local region more easily. So they have an investment in the

economy in good government. Like the whole thing ideally snowballed. So. The Pesh was just a shooting gallery while the insurgents while the Taliban had the corner gone as soon as they put bases in the Cornewall attacks on the past almost completely stopped. I can keep regressing if you want right to. Should we be in Afghanistan but just sort of in a local sense. That was the logic of Restrepo Korngold Pesh like that was the sort of logic of it. So I'm going to regress infinitum once. No no no non-infinite way peace is too scary for me. To regress one step because you mentioned Captain Kearney and here. This is currently speaking to a group of elders from a nearby village. This is a quote. You know five or 10 years from now the current go Valley will have a road going through it that's paved. And we can make more money make you guys richer make you guys more powerful. What I need though is I

need you to join with the government you know provide us with that security or help us provide you guys with that security and I'll flood this whole place with money and with projects and with healthcare and with everything. And in the film you see that the elders actually are more concerned with some locals who have who have been killed by the guys and they seem more interested in that. But if if Kearney is actually out there talking about a road over the next five or 10 years what are we to make of this. He he. I don't know why is it five or 10 years. I mean we're currently working on the road when we were there. They weren't able to finish. And even if they weren't talking about the road the road wouldn't take five or 10 years to build. But but even if you eliminate the road part but it would be another five or ten years before he is doing these before the

government Afghan and U.S. governments are going to be able to bring these benefits to the folks. When you hear him saying this you don't get the impression that any of this is ever going to work. Well you know it did occur in the Pesh like the river. They've they've they've put a road through. There's a trade school and decided by they were training young Afghans to work. It's a very poor area. And so it didn't happen in the Koran though because the Koran was sort of tactically too problematic and. It also just there probably weren't enough soldiers there like a hundred fifty men in that valley. It wasn't enough. So Kearney was sort of giving boilerplate inducements to join with the you know get with the program in some areas of Afghanistan. That program actually was happening. I mean like I you know I was in Kabul in 96 and it was just bombed to rubble. Now there's high rises there's cell

phones it's sort of a modern looking city it's completely unrecognizable. The quaint old Kabul is gone. But if you ask the Afghans who live there like their. This is like finally they're getting back to where Kabul was in the 70s before the. Soviets invaded. So it is I mean you're right about the Korngold but there are areas where everything Kearney was promising actually did happen because the were going to have to wrap it up and go to questions in a couple of minutes but. Maybe I'll wrap it up with this. The film ends with these words printed on the screen. In late 2009. The U.S. military began withdrawing from the Congo Valley and in fact by 2010 that withdrawal was completed. So. Does that mean that the efforts of 2nd Platoon in the valley

and others who were in that valley. Does that mean that those efforts were pointless. God. I mean. In some ways yes in some ways no. I mean if if it was important to bring development to the Passhe and to the rest of it are. They dismantled those bases once that process was over and they sort of felt like they didn't they didn't need to. They didn't they didn't need to basically like block the Taliban in that valley so they could get those projects done. Also you know I mean you know it's commanders in every war I'm sure feel that they don't have enough men and don't have enough resources. So they're constantly making choices about OK is this sort of area of the battlefield just not as important as it was five years ago. Is this other area that we've neglected do we actually need to use our scarce resources over there now. There was a a general sort of revamping of strategy a couple of years ago. It's called population

centric counterinsurgency. And they were realizing that these remote outposts. Were sort of costing more than they were benefiting the effort. And what they needed to do was put the soldiers. Around population centers and bring security to a greater proportion of Afghans these remote outpost were protecting tiny villages. There are parts of the population that will really never be engaged in government anyway. So. I mean in that sense it was just a strategic decision by commanders I mean autem way lesser scale then I mean even if you called it a mistake and maybe it was I don't know. Even as a mistake. That's that's what happens in war. Like people die because of mistakes. That's exactly what war is Dunkirk. You know we lost 30000. Thirty thousand soldiers at Dunkirk complete massive blunder. So

it's sort of what war is and it's I'm not saying we should or shouldn't have been in the corner. But that's the soldiers. As painful as it was to pull out of the Cornewall I mean the guy is likeable today. We're just incredibly upset. When they pulled out I mean they were beside themselves. But they also kind of understood like that's what it is. That's why it's all so incredibly tragic. Thank you so much. We're now going to turn it over to you guys to ask what you will. And if you haven't read the book War read it. If you haven't seen the film Restrepo make sure that you do. Sebastian thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I want to thank you for writing the book. I know a few young men. Over there. And they don't talk about the chances that you were able to say I appreciate that.

Thank you. I'm wondering. What you were thinking before you went and how you justify to your family you had to be a little. Crazy to call it that. You know that's. When I first went. I didn't realize how much combat there would be. I kind of thought had the same thoughts that technical team was having. Like wow. I bet we're just going to sit around for a year and I'm committed to this project. I'm like OK. You know a decent writer. Can turn a story about a platoon sitting around for a year into a good book so you'll just do it. And then I got there and sort of it all went crazy. I don't I don't wouldn't say exactly justified what I was doing but. What I tried with my wife what I tried to do was say maybe that I wasn't going to do anything on this scale again in combat which I think will be true. It had to

be I just never told her how bad it was. He sort of found out at the end. And. And I also sort of explained that in situations like that you can be stupid and foolhardy or you can be cautious and safer. And I'm I get scared very easily. I pay attention to what I am scared like I like I'm I'm very I'm actually very cautious and. I try to think in a very calculated way about what risks are worth it and what risks aren't. And I just had the feeling that my country is like in two decade long wars and I had the feeling that there was. A real social good in spending a lot of time with one unit and trying to explain to people in this country. What it's like for those guys. Not politically not strategically all those arguments and discussions that happened that need to happen. They're great

but I wanted people to know what it feels like to be a 20 year old man in combat for a year. How it affects him why he misses it when he comes home what he's scared of. I wanted to explain those things so that when these guys come home we have some sort of basis of understanding of what they went through so we can get them back successfully. I felt that there was a real good in that and that's worth a certain amount of risk. My son is and I appreciate your view. Good luck to them. I was in Vietnam in 67 and some of my good friends with the 173rd in Vietnam. My question is is there a difference in that soldier today in Afghanistan versus Vietnam. Listening to you it sounded identical. They were known for being very aggressive. Most of the nations were removed from central authority so they were kind of freewheeling. And so is the is that soldier today different and. And also the role that

sometimes you hear the soldier today has to be a statesman as well especially for a vigorous fighting unit like the 173rd. That can be very difficult. Your comments on that. Yeah. I mean in terms of the statesman role that would really fall to the officers. Captain Kearney. Captain Dan Kearney the lieutenants even the soldiers I mean the enlisted guys they're really security. For the sort of diplomatic efforts that are happening on the ground conducted by Kirti and and the lieutenant of the platoon leaders. You know they didn't have privates and specialists conducting. Diplomacy. I mean it just they these guys were security and they knew it and that's what they were good at. I got to say that the officers that I knew were just unbelievably smart motivated thoughtful guys. I mean. They were they were. I was just amazed by the huge cultural

gap to cross and all that. But they were you couldn't ask for sort of. Better or better men in those roles. And I was very very impressed by them. Are they the same guys the soldiers Yeah. I mean combat the essential is the emotional reality of combat hasn't. Always been the same you know it's never really changed. And. I think men adapt to it in the same ways and I think if you had been up there with me you would be having flashbacks. To your experience. I mean in the sense of wow there's that guys just like my buddy you know like you wouldn't you would be remember. I think you'd be remembering people in your youth from your service you see them all around you with that platoon. Thank you for your insights. That's for all of us today. Thank you. I have a question about the poppies in Afghanistan and the consequences of this war. I understand that when the Russians left Afghanistan there was about

15 12 to 15 percent of the army ended up addicted to heroin and 10 15 years later they're offering all kinds of medical crisis related to TB and HIV and hepatitis C related to this. I want to find out. You know you talked about these young men they're 20 years old some of them are coming from disadvantaged situations. They're now in this world where they have a lot of control and they're going to come back. There's a lot of emotional issues related to it. Does the heroine I mean just the opium poppy and heroin issues in Afghanistan. And the prevalence of it there in the fact that it supplies 90 percent of the world's population the heroin concern you with these troops. I mean the poppy crop in Afghanistan plays a very destructive role in the war and in that society and you could argue in the world. I think very little of it gets to the soldiers. I mean there was nobody out at. RESTREPO nobody was on anything. I think you know there was once in a while some parents would send some vodka in a bottle of mouthwash. You know like that was

about it. I think there was probably a little bit of pot smoking but you know I mean I have a. Karl Marlantes friend of mine a wonderful author who wrote a novel called Matterhorn amazing novel about Vietnam incredible and Outpost very similar to Restrepo except they were at about a thousand times war combat. And. He said that he was a lieutenant. He was a young lieutenant in command of a platoon at a remote outpost. He said one night he heard a kind of thumping like beating sound going on down the you know the elsewhere in the outpost. And the next day as the platoon sergeant. Like what was that what was going on. And he said Oh some of the boys caught one you know one of them smoking pot. And. So they beat him up so he wouldn't do it again. And at those outposts it's too dangerous to not have your act together. I mean that's the thing is like if you don't tie your shoe laces you get yelled at not by the

lieutenant but by your buddy. He's like Listen man if we get hit right now you trip over those things. I'm dead like try that shit. You know like don't let me down here. And so if they can get upset about shoelaces imagine being stoned like they just don't. Everyone's life is at risk. In virtually everything that everyone does. So. When you read even as a reporter out there I really feeling like OK if I don't you know we're going on a long patrol 24 hour patrol I need to hide or I need to drink a lot of water because if the hydrate I'm twice the age of these guys I'm in good shape. But like if I dehydrate and I start to have leg cramps and I slow the platoon down and we get hit it's it's on me you know. So everything you did. You realized could have consequences not just for you. That really doesn't matter as much as for everyone else. So getting stoned out there it's like we're not going to happen on the big bases. I can easily imagine it but I didn't spend any time on those bases. I think it's probably more pot and alcohol than heroin though.

Thank you that's reassuring. I thank you for your insights so far. I'm a high school history teacher in Dorchester and I teach the 20th century in U.S. history and so we spent a lot of time on wars and 20th century. I'm about to start a long unit on the soldiers experience and the civilians experience in the war. And I'm wondering what you would recommend in terms of helping students understand the realities of war. Especially from a soldier's point of view. You mean in terms of what you read or what. I mean God. Tim O'Brien the things they carried is amazing. I thought Dispatches. I mean it's. About a journalist really but it's about soldiers dispatches by Michael Herr. Amazing. There an encouraging and devastating book novel about World War One called Johnny got his gun. Just. I mean. Devastating.

You know I would humbly recommend my book to. You. I mean the point of my book was to explain to civilians what it feels like. That was where I was trying to do with it. I mean I almost didn't wear it. I toyed with the idea of not even using the word Afghanistan in my book. I didn't want anyone to think that this is about Afghanistan and the policy issues and that strategic problems I try. I thought about not even using that word. I wanted it to be about the universal experience of combat. That's what the. That's what it was for and so your students may find some insights in there too. Hello. I just want to thank you for writing the book I just finished reading it this week and I have to give you a lot of credit because you've got my wife to actually read a military book. Thank you. You're welcome. We have a son who just recently joined the Army's only 21 infantry man and will be supposedly going over to Afghanistan in the springtime. And you have a

chapter in your book where you write about devotion to the squad and how that really binds those guys together. And I want to just relate this to something that happened in the news we read about a sergeant recently as I'm sure you probably read who was targeting civilians in Afghanistan had his squad with him sort of from what I've read. Forcing them to do it. And my question to you is with that devotion to that squad How do we expect some 18 or 19 year old soldier who knows that's wrong with that if a sergeant goes off kilter like that to report something like that because he's probably going to be putting his own life in danger and that devotion to squad is so strong especially if they're an outpost something like Restrepo I would what would happen. I mean how is somebody supposed to make that right. Yeah oh that's a great question. I mean that's the that's the you could argue that the downside of devotion of brotherhood is they can it can lead you down to very bad paths and it really depends on leaders acting well as well as leaders

act badly that say Brotherhood and devotion turns into. I mean look the German army and World War II you know it turns into this sort of monstrous endeavor. All that you know sure the German soldiers had exactly the same bond with each other that I saw Restrepo. It was just towards this ghastly end. And so it really does depend on the leaders. Fortunately very few squad leaders. Are sociopaths. That guy is a sociopath. You know fortunately very few of them are. And that guy would probably be killing people in society here. It's just easier over there. And he put his men in a terrible position terrible terrible position and there was sort of no way for them to win either they betray the trust of that unit or they or they become murderers themselves. It's just ghastly. I don't know what the answer is probably better psychological screening. Thank you. Yeah. Either good

read your book and I think it's great. Thank you. I'm a student in what I was wondering is I have to read a paper. On. Whether we should be in Afghanistan right now or not. Oh that's an easy one. As a man of experience it's just like your opinion on that oh god. You want to air it out. Like. An. That such a complicated. Ok I'll try and be clear and brief. And on and off the record. Yeah. I mean here. I'm not stating my opinion. I just want to clarify the terms right. I'm a journalist. I don't. Tell people how to think and I don't. Tell people they should think like me but I am in a good position to make things clearer so that. You all can make better decisions. Right. So.

There's. There's two I can see two very very good reasons for pulling out of Afghanistan. One is that it's not making us safer. That would be the argument. And the other reason is that civilians are getting killed. So. If you say should we be in Afghanistan presumably you're tackling those one of those two questions in your mind. So the bottom up and I'll try to answer them briefly. I've been going to Afghanistan since the 90s. The toll in human suffering and civilian death in the 90s was. Astronomical. According to Human Rights Watch. Something like 400000 Afghan civilians were killed in the 90s. OK. That that era ended effectively ended in 2001 when U.S. entered Afghanistan after 9/11 NATO followed soon thereafter. In the

decade not even decade in the nine years since NATO has been there. The highest estimates of civilian casualties that I've read are 30000. So you go from 400000 in one decade to 30000 in the next one. If your reason for leaving Afghanistan is based on the welfare of the Afghans. Those numbers become problematic. If. If I thought that civilians would stop dying at all when NATO pulled out. I would. That's a pretty good pretty convincing argument to pull out. Unfortunately I'm not convinced that that's the case. Tragically tragically I think it's going to go back to the 90s. I wish that weren't so and we had a simple solution and we could leave. It's more complicated than that. The other issue is security. No I don't know. No one knows if our presence in Afghanistan has prevented another 9/11. There's no way to know that.

The alternative to being there I suppose just logically is OK we leave. And if we have 9/11 every 10 years that may be a lower cost than being over there. I don't know. That's for the nation to decide. There's no way to sort of know that. But that is the logical alternative. And the people who say that that's a lower cost they may well be right. You know economically in terms of blood they may be right as a journalist. I'm not in a position to make that call but I think those those are the issues that are that we're trying to decide. I just don't know what the answers are. Thank you very much. Thank you Jake. Just a quick question just a very brief answer. What are your feelings about the multiple tours that Shiites are. Sir I just saw a story about a guy who was killed on his ninth tour and there was a story a few weeks ago about a fell on his 12 story tour. It is a volunteer army. Any thoughts about that.

I mean we're overstretched. You know if I could. Why why are they doing. Not all tours are 15 months. By the way some are three months or six months or a year. But in people are not doing. Nine or 10 tours frequently but that is common to over three or four or five. I mean I think that's happening because we went to Iraq. I mean if you want the short version you know I mean I think Afghanistan I mean realistically we ate with we had focused the amount of attention and money and resources on Afghanistan that got poured into Iraq. I think Afghanistan would be Bosnia now in other words it would be a sort of troubled country that is gradually going itself back together after 20 years of trauma. That didn't happen. We went to Iraq. I know people there are. I understand that that you can articulate good things that came out of that war. I understand that. I don't want to get into that debate. Personally I was against it. But. I do understand that there are two sides of the debate but just sticking to Afghanistan that that was the tragedy is that we may or may

not have lost the Iraq war but Iraq may have cost us the Afghan war and now guys are doing multiple tours. Everyone in the second platoon except Brendan O'Byrne. Chose to stay in the army despite the multiple tours like their soldiers and that. They understand that's what they're going to have to do. Those guys second platoon they just finished their next appointment after the one I was on with them. They're just finishing it up now. I don't know what to do about it. We're stretched too thin. I think the alternative conceivably is a draft but that has other enormous complicated downsides. The soldiers do not want a draft not the ones I know they're like listen we don't want someone point guard duty who doesn't want to be here. Like forget it like don't do that. It's like it's not going to work any better than having a draft for the police department or the fire department. Like you don't want that. So I really don't know what the answer is. So I was a platoon leader in Iraq and in watching Restrepo I think

we don't see a lot of like film time with the prisoners and so I just sort of assume that they didn't play maybe as active a role but listening to you talk today it sounds like they went on every patrol. So sort of what made you decide when you're editing to sort of leave out. Not that I'm criticizing your editing but I feel like. We. Basically we were trying to make a movie where the. That we gave our viewers the maximum amount of emotional access to that reality. To those soldiers. And there were soldiers who. Were great guys who we were good friends with but they just weren't comfortable in front of the camera particularly they. Were a little guarded. They were a little shy often. The platoon leader was Steve Gillespie and. I think partly because of his position. I mean he really liked the we were good friends with Steve. But

you know you know you turn the camera on him and he just got a little bit official a little bit. Careful you know. And so when we did our interviews in Italy after the deployment we follow those guys to have a chance. Three months later we did studio interviews with our principal characters and those principal characters were basically the people that we thought could communicate emotionally in the most effective way with the viewers. Steve as great a lieutenant as he was and as great a guy as he was was not that. So you drop out you know once you drop out of the group we had for the Italy interviews. Suddenly the footage the tape footage. But the people that aren't in those interviews becomes less. You can do less with it is less interesting and so you know it's a 90 minute film based on a 15 minute month deployment. And it's. You just make these terrible terrible choices. I mean agonizing choices and one of them was to not have in there because he was such a great guy but he just didn't quite work.

I thank you also for your book. How far out was air assets for you guys up in that valley St. Paul and. What was available. Air assets where you saw like about you know the air assets were 30 40 minutes away so we got attacked. It would take they could get mortars going and artillery rounds coming from Camp buzzing within minutes. But air assets the Apaches the A-10s took about half an hour. It basically was a fair fight for half an hour. And the enemy knew that of course they would often attack half an hour before dusk. So they did have they'd have half an hour without Apaches and then then it would be dusk. It was at this weird half white where it's too bright for night vision goggles and too dark. To not use night vision goggles and a really messed up the Apache pilots. And so the enemy sort of figured that out. So half an hour before dusk is often when

they are attacked. They're smart guys they're fighting. I mean we're fighting very very smart people over there. I haven't read your book but I will now. Thank you. I'm Charlene and I was an Army during the Vietnam era and I am now a therapist and I work as a volunteer with soldiers from any area that they come back in. Perhaps Mr. Herbert would also have some comments. I came up here with one question and as I listened to you that it just gets out more than in looking at the Vietnam vets and comparing them as I hear you talk. There were not Brotherhoods with the guys that were in Vietnam. They moved them in and out so quickly that they didn't have a time to coalesce as his brothers. And so I don't think that there might have been the same kinds of feelings that you describe but I am open to some some information on that. And then I think. So I think we learned that to train soldiers as a group

and to send them as a group and all of that may have come out of that. The other thing I think we may have learned is about welcoming people back. Vietnam was not a popular war. People were ignored. Soldiers coming back were not treated very well. But now we welcome them and that has also been a very healing thing for the Vietnam vets. A couple of years ago on this day I was down at the wall because I was living in D.C. and there has been a change just like a second order change. The Vietnam Veterans are now saying they feel better about their service they're beginning to heal. So I want to I want to go back to your question or your comment then about wanting to know what it was like for a 20 year old to be in combat. Because in volunteering to work with our soldiers I'd like to know what I can do. You know what can I share with my colleagues about what it's going to take because at this point we are looking at all of the concussions and the brain damage and the after effects of that and the PTSD

kids who are 19 and 20 have not yet formulated their own sense of their morality and we know that that's a part of what we do I'm in for them to come back. We've got to get to the. I'm sorry. At the end of your question that can be my statement and you can give me feedback on that what can they do to me. I mean you know there's the physical. Ramifications of combat like TBI. I know very little about. I don't know anything about that. The psychological ramifications. I mean they depend on what happens to the guy like in the Korean and all the fighting was up in the hills not in villages it certainly wasn't in cities. They just American soldiers I was with never saw their enemy fighters and never saw that civilians once. Once from a bomb dropped that day wasn't there a bomb drop. It was you know it's like that wasn't their decision. So they didn't have

these awful sort of like moral crises where at these like checkpoint situations in Iraq where you think you're getting attacked with a car bomb and you stop it with machine gun fire and the family like that's devastating. That didn't happen to the guys I was with where I was you know. I mean to get as I said before I think removing the inadvertent killing of innocents from the equation probably the most devastating effect of combat is losing your. Friends. Like just think about it this way. Imagine you got I mean this is mostly an older crowd OK so imagine your sons in high school. He's walking down the street with his best best friends. At a car swerves and. Kills the friend in front of your son. Like the guy bleeds out bleed to death in your son's arms by the side of the road. That's his high school experience that happens to him senior year in high school. OK. Imagine how long you would take your son to get over that experience of seeing his best friend killed in front of him.

He wouldn't get over it. That's combat. And not only does that happen it happens over and over and even worse Not even worse. But in addition. That imaginary high school boy has no reason to think that tomorrow he could be dead from. I mean it's a freak accident there's no reason to think that with soldiers not only are they losing their best friends they're losing it in the ways that they're watching it happen. They're feeling guilty that they can't prevent it. I couldn't stop him from bleeding. He bled out and I got to turn it wrong like that kind of thing. Not only are they blaming themselves. But they're also thinking shit that could have been me. It's going to be me tomorrow. That's the trauma of combat. So they come back. I mean just picture your son in high school and having that happen. That's a soldier coming home. That's what has to be dealt with. And on top of it. A lot of them miss it. So untangle that one. You know it sometimes it takes them a lifetime to think.

Thank you sir. One of the things we can do as civilians. Is pay much more attention to what's going on in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and end war. The book helps us. And Restrepo the film helps us so that we're aware of what these young troops are going through and that when we when we vote or when we talk to friends or neighbors or representatives or whatever. We speak from a position of awareness and care for what's going on. That would be a big help. It really upsets me to see the degree. To which people are tuned out to the wars overseas. The trauma that you saw and you observe and the information that you gathered during this period and your own exhaustion from these 24 hour patrols and your own feelings of fear can you

talk about the process of writing what you took for supplies how you got the extra reserves to write and remember all these details to make such a book. Of course I was. I mean I'm a journalist. I I write down everything of relevance that I see here experience or think on assignment. I just just keep filling up notebooks so thank God I'm not just relying on my memory. I was also. So I kept my notebook. You know I would write notes as things happened. I would also at the end of the day I would sit on the ammo hooch. Which look north over the Korngold towards the past very beautiful spot and I'd sort of keep a basically a very deep journal. That included my thoughts my it my own emotional reactions to things like questions the things that bothered me like they killed the guy at one point a fighter. I mean they killed a fighter and they sort of cheered that cheer. I mean I understood the need to kill the guy who was shooting at us. The cheere troubled me. I wrote many pages

about it and eventually interviewed interviewed I asked Stiner like what was that about man that didn't look too good and Stiner explained it to me you know. So that's the journalistic process. In addition I was shooting a lot of video Tim and I each had a video camera so we were there alone sometimes together. We shot video continually. And so I didn't write my book out there. I chronicled the experience out there and I came home and write it wrote it very very quickly in about six months. Last. Summer before last. It was a very emotional extremely emotional process for me for the first time in my life. It was like extremely emotional. Process. Thank you for your book and your film. Thank you. I'm with 20 years in the Navy retired three years ago. I am also a gay man and I came up here someone very reluctantly and nervous. I know you're not a politician and you're not.

You weren't you didn't write the book and produced the movie. Because you wanted to influence policy. But. Having lived your experience do you think that there is a valid concern about openly gay men serving next to soldiers and Marines in combat. Is that. A real issue. Are you eating. Right. Great question. Well OK. How could I put it out at Restrepo. Everyone kind of became the same. Because. I don't mean in terms of their personalities but in terms of their behavior. Like the situation was so extreme and so hard and everyone depended on each other so much. That they all became a certain kind of. Soldier person. I think if you'd had a woman out there. She would have become that. Right. You could have a Harvard educated and you know whatever to become

that you could have a farm kid from Georgia. He would have become that like I became that except I didn't have a gun. Right. I think if you had a gay man out there he did become that. So the term openly gay I think would cease to be relevant out there. Those sort of like. Social markers that are so important in this society those social identities that are so important in this society. Harvard grad women's game whatever it is. They just get obliterated out there out of necessity. Everyone. Is necessary out there. And I asked those guys I put the question to him because they were all. I mean. They're always joking around about being gay. You know like they were always accusing each other of being gay. You know it just sort of male you know whatever humor straight male humor you know you know that was sort part of the part of the humor out there and so I said like. So if. They they didn't like how long we have to be out here until we

actually started doing it with each other like that was kind of the secret of the thought process. Right. You know they didn't see any. They didn't see any women for a year you know and some of the guys were better looking than others and some of those guys were like gay men. You better to point deployment better and quick. Because you look you know you're starting look pretty good. You know it is all just brotherly love really. You know it's humor. But I asked them what was it like with the bed. Seriously if there was a gay guy out here what would it be an issue or not. And and the answer was really interesting is the answer was out here. No we all need each other we know there's you know like we are a lot weirder things going on out here than someone being gay. You know like that's just the beginning of why did the specter of like behavior out here like it's like you know we would have no problem with it on the big bases. They would. It's like at

Restrepo you don't really have the pleasure of your prejudices. You can indulge your prejudices. You don't have the luxury but then there wasn't that luxury of your prejudices. On the big bases. You said it would be more of an issue. It would absolutely be an issue. And. In training. Yeah absolutely. Like back in Italy or a bootcamp absolutely it would be. Openly like his his opinion was openly gay and those situations would be problematic. It's it's ironic though the military's rationale for don't ask don't tell is that in situations where everyone where the group bond is so important you don't want to be threatened by that. The irony is that it's. It's only and precisely in those situations where it would cease to matter. And it's in the rear bases in Italy where it's not life or death. And

so these other things become. Unfortunately unfortunately become problematic. Thank you very much. Include. I go. First of all I appreciate your honesty. I know you don't want to get political. That's not the purpose. Can I can I have to interrupt you one second because we're going to wrap it up and there's one woman behind you so we've got time for two very quick questions. Well I'll just leave some thought with you. Food for thought this five page of The Globe last Saturday about Sergeant Ted Kennedy's speech Friday. And I just mention that Jack Kennedy wrote about that. Yes. I read it as a country that paraphrased it is about 6 percent of

us represent the population and 94 percent the rest of the world very fast. OK. We can't solve everything. And you don't even have to call back I just want people to look that quote up. And I hope this will be the stat of that talk a debate that people will pay attention to what's going on. Thank you. Thank you. I just have an experience in Vietnam. I was there in 71 72 when the troops were being pulled out and the officers were being killed by the enlisted men defragging some were going on and on. I after you get out of Vietnam I have to thank everybody who protested against the Vietnam War. You saved my life because I only had a five month tour the seven month tour. So thank you very much. And I was just thinking of the soldiers who die lose the war. There's no winning or losing. It's the soldier who

dies. And I cannot believe that this country is not protesting this war. We plan on pulling out. That 2011. And I was lucky enough to go over the Soviet Union. I spoke to the Soviet soldiers who fought in the Afghanistan war and they were telling me exactly the story she was saying and I said to myself when the U.S. went into Afghanistan we'll be in and we'll be out we'll learn from the Soviet situation but we haven't learned from the French from Vietnam. We haven't learned from the Soviets in Afghanistan and I have just one more statement to say Smedley Butler said. The war is a racket. The few profit and many pay and we're all paying for it no matter how you look at it. So I would like to know how this is on my loss. Well my question is my question very question. All right. A very quick and then my question is how do you look at the pull out

of Afghanistan which the U.S. plans on starting next year. I don't know anything about those plans. My. My worry about staying is that it's not a winnable war. I worry about leaving is that if we pull out it will be way worse than it is now for the Afghan people. So I don't have an answer. Those are my worries. I hope one or the other isn't true. But. I you know I can't see the future. I think there's a good and a bad way to proceed if we stay. That's a different conversation. But I don't know what decisions will be made obviously. Thank you so much everyone for coming in. Thank you. Appreciate it. Today's. Ruling