Just Finished Reading: War by Sebastian Junger (FP: 2010) [278pp] 

What is it like to be in combat in a modern war? How do people cope, from all kinds of backgrounds, with the danger and the boredom? What does a year in a war zone do to people and how does it affect them months or even years later? What do frontline soldiers think about the war they’ve volunteered to take part in? These questions, and more both thought about and not, would be answered in the most direct way by the author. The way to find out, possibly the only way to find out, is to be there with them – coping with the same heat, the same cold and the same MRE rations. To be there when the boredom is so bad it becomes dangerous, to be there when the sniper bullets are coming in and everyone knows that RPGs will soon be following. To be there, with the guys, as they run across open ground under fire to help one of their own shouting for help, or to hear them sobbing in their sleep after they see their best friend drop dead beside them from a headshot from who knows where. To be there to ask difficult questions when they’re willing to talk and to laugh along at their bad jokes.   

Over a 15-month deployment in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, the author spent 4 months doing just that. The 2nd Platoon of Battle Company, part of the US 173rd Airborne Brigade were the very tip of the spear and had been deployed on what the author called “sort of the Afghanistan of Afghanistan: too ­remote to conquer, too poor to intimidate, too autonomous to buy off.” Needless to say, it wasn’t the safest place to be for an American soldier or a journalist (and his cameraman) who was covering them. Under fire almost every day in the ‘fighting season’ and randomly at other times – from a single random shot from a hillside to a sustained attack lasting hours – death was always close at hand despite body armour, med packs and helicopter evac. The difference between seeing the next day and getting sent home to your family in a box might be the availability of a close Apache attack helicopter, an A-10  attack aircraft or fire support from a nearby base – and, of course, the guy sleeping in the next bunk. That level of trust and responsibility to the guy next to you builds something in a team of youngsters, something you just don’t get in civilian life where an untied shoe or a forgotten battery recharge doesn’t put both your life and the lives of the team in mortal danger. 

Despite all my previous reading on combat and soldiers, this was still quite an eye-opener. I think it was both the closeness and the rawness of the account that made the difference. This wasn’t just a journalist who flew in, interviewed a few men and an officer for an hour or two and then disappeared. This was a journalist who was ‘in the shit’ with the people he was reporting on and who agonised about his responsibility not to do anything stupid which endangered the others or whether he could pick up a gun to defend them if things got really bad. I was actually impressed that, although he didn’t carry a weapon throughout his multiple visits he was trained to use all of the weapons at the platoon's disposal and even offered to carry ammunition for the heavy weapon team when one of their number was going to be ‘bumped’ to make room for him on the helicopter. Overall, I was very impressed by the author and am looking forward to reading some of his previous work (including ‘The Perfect Wave’) and his follow up to this book on the effects of PTSD. Obviously with a book of this nature there are some nasty moments and a sprinkling of profanity throughout, so be warned. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to understand modern combat or the Afghan War. 

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