The Best War Reporting I’ve Encountered

War, as the title suggests, is the best war reporting I’ve encountered in my reading thus far. Like everyone’s favorite war-ish cliché, War is visceral. It is heartbreaking. It evokes rage. It harbors contempt. It loves.

In the summers of 2007 and 2008 Junger embedded with Battle Company 2/503 Infantry Regiment in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. He was joined by photographer Tim Hetherington. Junger stated that his goal was to just report and even said “It’s a completely apolitical film. We wanted to give viewers the experience of being in combat with soldiers, and so our cameras never leave their side. There are no interviews with generals; there is no moral or political analysis. It is a purely experiential film.” The film reference is the documentary Restrepo. PFC Juan Restrepo was a medic who was killed in action during an early mission. Members from his platoon named their outpost in his honor. The film focuses on the unit during the deployment and War covers the same period of time.

Junger and Hetherington make several trips to Afghanistan over the course of the 2/503’s 15-month deployment and embed with Soldier’s at different combat outposts or COPs. The unit with whom they are embedded is on the very edge of US controlled territory and they, Junger and Hetherington, are sometimes forced to assist Soldiers during firefights by passing ammunition and water. Junger and Hetherington both participated on a dismounted operation and had to help carry ammunition and other essentials. Junger discusses how he felt that such acts comprised his journalistic integrity but that he had no choice if he wanted to survive. He also discusses the bonds he developed with some Soldiers after living in such remote and austere conditions with them and that he did not want to see them harmed.

Though I am a Soldier, I am not an infantryman. Junger and Hetherington spent more time in hazardous locations than I have over my two deployments. Normally, I do not like journalists embedding with military units as it can compromise missions and put people at risk. I believed that journalists put themselves and others in the way of danger selfishly. That was the viewpoint I held as I read War. After finishing the book, I am glad that men like Junger and Hetherington exist. I want brave men and women to record what really happens. Those of us who have not experienced war like 2/503 will never truly understand but this helps us relate. Tim Hetherington died in 2011 covering the Libyan civil war. We know what happened there thanks to brave men like him.

This is the only book by Sebastian Junger that I have read to date but it will not be the last.  Read this book for Memorial Day or Veteran’s Day next year.  It will change the way you feel about the military.  It changed the way I feel too.