Details Magazine Interviews Sebastian Junger
The Perfect Storm author discusses military life in Afghanistan, why his new book War is his most personal yet, and what M*A*S*H got wrong.
(Details via HSB)
Apr 30, 2010
Read Full Article Here
Sebastian Junger
The Perfect Storm author discusses military life in Afghanistan, why his new book War is his most personal yet, and what M*A*S*H got wrong.
By Timothy Holder
June 2010 Issue
Also on Details.com
Beginning in 2007, Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm) spent 15 months embedded with a small platoon in the Restrepo outpost, a mountainside base in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, which at the time was considered to be possibly the most dangerous place in the world. (Seventy percent of the bombs dropped in Afghanistan hit in or around the valley.) Last week, after years of violence and setbacks, the United States finally abandoned the valley to focus its efforts elsewhere. This May will see the publication of Junger's book about his time overseas, War (Twelve, $27); it is an intense journey into military life in a war zone. Restrepo, the Sundance Grand Jury Prize–winning documentary Junger directed with the help of war photographer Tim Hetherington, will be released this July.
Details: You've written many books, obviously, but this is the first film you've made. Did you go into Afghanistan expecting to codirect a documentary?
Sebastian Junger: I wanted to write a book about a platoon, and I was using a video camera in my reporting. I thought if I was going to spend that much time with the platoon, then I might as well film the whole time—and if I can turn that footage into a documentary, then great. But if I can't, it will still serve a reporting purpose. Then I hooked up with Tim Hetherington, who is a visual artist. We started making the movie after the deployment was over while I was writing my book. They weren't mutually exclusive, and they actually complemented each other quite well..
Details: It is definitely interesting to compare the two, because while they both tell the same basic story, they tell it in very different ways.
Sebastian Junger: I conceived of the book, and Tim and I conceived of the movie, in very similar ways. We were not interested in the broader political or military or moral conversation about the war. Neither one is about Afghanistan, neither one is about George Bush, neither one is about whether we can win this or not win this. It's totally about the emotional experience of being in combat. And that experience does not change war to war or century to century.
Details: How did Afghanistan compare to your earlier experiences reporting from war zones?
Sebastian Junger: Well, I had never been with Americans before, in a unit where I felt a very strong affiliation and connection and a sense of shared fate. I have been in civil wars, where I was not interested in sharing the fate of the people around me. [Laughs] I was in Africa with child soldiers, and I was in Afghanistan starting in 1996, and in Eastern Europe and the Balkans in 1993, 1994. I was definitely reporting on someone else's problems, and I did not want to get killed doing it. I didn't want to get killed doing this either, but it was the first time that I experienced a shared feeling with the actual combatants. Not with the civilians—you can go to an African civil war and feel a great and profound and tragic connection with the civilians that are suffering, but that's not what I am talking about.
Details: In another interview, your collaborator Tim Hetherington talked about it as being "emotionally embedded." Do you think that connection affected your reporting?
Sebastian Junger: It limited my ability to empathize with the Taliban for sure. In theory, you have no allegiance either way and report with dispassion on both sides, about both sides. It's utterly unachievable in practice, but that's the theory. I think my connection to the guys I was with—what it meant was that my own lack of objectivity was clearer and more undeniable than it is in other stories, where you still aren't objective but it's easier to think you are. In this one, I couldn't even think that I was objective. I was like, "No, I am with these guys, and the value of what I am doing lies in the connection to them, not in my supposed indifference to them."
Details: Was this the first time that you'd been so close to so much gunfire?
Sebastian Junger: There are different kinds of danger in war, and I hadn't been in front-line, small-arms fire like that before. On the other hand, we weren't getting shelled. The Taliban didn't have artillery. I've been in conflicts where I wasn't getting shot at but was getting shelled pretty badly. That's way more scary. I mean, you know, pick your punishment.
Details: In the film, some of the firefights, which are pretty intense-looking, almost seemed like an everyday, boring routine for the soldiers.
Sebastian Junger: They're well trained, and their safety lies in that training. Also, a number of the firefights were happening while the soldiers were behind cover, in their base behind sandbags, and you've got to be pretty unlucky to get hit in the forehead by a bullet that comes through a small firing position. But I promise you that if you get ambushed in the open without cover, it's a very different experience, and there is none of the joking around or lightheartedness.
Details: Vanity Fair originally commissioned you to write a series of articles about your time with the troops in Afghanistan. When did you decide that this was a bigger story?
Sebastian Junger: Probably when I was writing about being in the IED attack, the emotional effect on me. I put my own feelings in—all my journalistic instincts were telling me not to, but I felt like there was some real value there, and when I started doing that, I started having a really profound emotional reaction in the writing. I mean, I was dreaming about it and being very affected by what I was writing.
I had a nightmare, and I put it in the book. As a journalist, I had such trepidation about putting a dream in a reported book, but then I realized that we are all having nightmares out here, this is what it's about, so go for it. This is the kind of thing that is going to make this book different from other books about this war.
When I was writing The Perfect Storm, it was a journalistic story about a town that I cared about, but it wasn't personal in that sense. This was. I started dreaming about it every night—literally every night—while I was writing. Once I reached that level of emotional connectedness to the topic, I started writing very, very well. I mean, writers know when they are writing like shit and when they are writing really well. [Laughs] Everybody knows. I just began writing really powerfully, and I thought, I am onto something here.
Details: Do you think that American civilians have an adequate understanding of what's going over there?
Sebastian Junger: Americans don't have an understanding of what it's like to be at a small outpost with 15 other men. I think some Americans have an understanding of the broader military and political issues. I think other people think they have an understanding of those things. But what it's like to be a grunt, no, I don't think Americans have any understanding of that, but I am hoping with my book and my movie, they will.
Details: Have you talked to any of the members of the platoon about the U.S. withdrawal from the Korengal Valley?
Sebastian Junger: Yeah, I have, and they're pretty moved and upset by it. I don't think they're upset in the sense that they want the U.S. to stay and keep losing soldiers there, but I think they are upset in the way that divorce is upsetting. Okay, this marriage isn't working, but it doesn't mean that divorce isn't painful. It's painful for these guys to watch the video that MSNBC shot of the Restrepo outpost burning. You know, it's named after a guy [platoon medic Juan Restrepo] that they all loved, and they sacrificed and worked and fought up there for 15 months. It is a very, very different level of reality from the wider military question: Is it a good decision or a bad decision? They are really not connected, but it is an important level to acknowledge and honor, I think.
Details: Was there anything about American soldiers in particular that surprised or impressed you?
Sebastian Junger: I grew up during Vietnam, and it was a very different military, a very different war, and a very different country. Then, in the 1980s, the military was kind of seen as a dead-end career if you didn't really have anything else to do. I'm speaking as a Massachusetts Democrat; this was the vision of the military that I inherited from my surroundings.
So when I started working with the military, I was not prepared for what it means to have an all-volunteer army. What it means is that no one is bitching about what is happening to them. They don't complain about it because they all chose to sign up. That is very, very different from Vietnam, and it hadn't occurred to me. Not that they don't have complaints about what it feels like to be there, but not about why they are there in the first place.
The other thing that really struck me was how incredibly smart the officers are—and many of the enlisted men too. And they are really dedicated. Any of those officers, from lieutenant on up, could have been at Harvard, could have been running a small business, or they could have been trying to clean up the valley.
Details: In the popular image of the military, say Catch-22 or M*A*S*H, you name it, the officers are always just...
Sebastian Junger: Just bureaucratic idiots. Nope, that is gone.
Details: Finally, why is this a subject matter that you keep returning to?
Sebastian Junger: Well, the stakes in war are very, very high, and so it feels important. The human drama is extremely intense, and so it's riveting. I think that the effect on you as a person and me as a person is pretty profound. Also, I think that in some strange ways, it was very good for me. You combine those three things and you've got a war reporter.
Read Full Article Here
(Details via HSB)
Apr 30, 2010
Read Full Article Here
Sebastian Junger
The Perfect Storm author discusses military life in Afghanistan, why his new book War is his most personal yet, and what M*A*S*H got wrong.
By Timothy Holder
June 2010 Issue
Also on Details.com
Beginning in 2007, Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm) spent 15 months embedded with a small platoon in the Restrepo outpost, a mountainside base in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, which at the time was considered to be possibly the most dangerous place in the world. (Seventy percent of the bombs dropped in Afghanistan hit in or around the valley.) Last week, after years of violence and setbacks, the United States finally abandoned the valley to focus its efforts elsewhere. This May will see the publication of Junger's book about his time overseas, War (Twelve, $27); it is an intense journey into military life in a war zone. Restrepo, the Sundance Grand Jury Prize–winning documentary Junger directed with the help of war photographer Tim Hetherington, will be released this July.
Details: You've written many books, obviously, but this is the first film you've made. Did you go into Afghanistan expecting to codirect a documentary?
Sebastian Junger: I wanted to write a book about a platoon, and I was using a video camera in my reporting. I thought if I was going to spend that much time with the platoon, then I might as well film the whole time—and if I can turn that footage into a documentary, then great. But if I can't, it will still serve a reporting purpose. Then I hooked up with Tim Hetherington, who is a visual artist. We started making the movie after the deployment was over while I was writing my book. They weren't mutually exclusive, and they actually complemented each other quite well..
Details: It is definitely interesting to compare the two, because while they both tell the same basic story, they tell it in very different ways.
Sebastian Junger: I conceived of the book, and Tim and I conceived of the movie, in very similar ways. We were not interested in the broader political or military or moral conversation about the war. Neither one is about Afghanistan, neither one is about George Bush, neither one is about whether we can win this or not win this. It's totally about the emotional experience of being in combat. And that experience does not change war to war or century to century.
Details: How did Afghanistan compare to your earlier experiences reporting from war zones?
Sebastian Junger: Well, I had never been with Americans before, in a unit where I felt a very strong affiliation and connection and a sense of shared fate. I have been in civil wars, where I was not interested in sharing the fate of the people around me. [Laughs] I was in Africa with child soldiers, and I was in Afghanistan starting in 1996, and in Eastern Europe and the Balkans in 1993, 1994. I was definitely reporting on someone else's problems, and I did not want to get killed doing it. I didn't want to get killed doing this either, but it was the first time that I experienced a shared feeling with the actual combatants. Not with the civilians—you can go to an African civil war and feel a great and profound and tragic connection with the civilians that are suffering, but that's not what I am talking about.
Details: In another interview, your collaborator Tim Hetherington talked about it as being "emotionally embedded." Do you think that connection affected your reporting?
Sebastian Junger: It limited my ability to empathize with the Taliban for sure. In theory, you have no allegiance either way and report with dispassion on both sides, about both sides. It's utterly unachievable in practice, but that's the theory. I think my connection to the guys I was with—what it meant was that my own lack of objectivity was clearer and more undeniable than it is in other stories, where you still aren't objective but it's easier to think you are. In this one, I couldn't even think that I was objective. I was like, "No, I am with these guys, and the value of what I am doing lies in the connection to them, not in my supposed indifference to them."
Details: Was this the first time that you'd been so close to so much gunfire?
Sebastian Junger: There are different kinds of danger in war, and I hadn't been in front-line, small-arms fire like that before. On the other hand, we weren't getting shelled. The Taliban didn't have artillery. I've been in conflicts where I wasn't getting shot at but was getting shelled pretty badly. That's way more scary. I mean, you know, pick your punishment.
Details: In the film, some of the firefights, which are pretty intense-looking, almost seemed like an everyday, boring routine for the soldiers.
Sebastian Junger: They're well trained, and their safety lies in that training. Also, a number of the firefights were happening while the soldiers were behind cover, in their base behind sandbags, and you've got to be pretty unlucky to get hit in the forehead by a bullet that comes through a small firing position. But I promise you that if you get ambushed in the open without cover, it's a very different experience, and there is none of the joking around or lightheartedness.
Details: Vanity Fair originally commissioned you to write a series of articles about your time with the troops in Afghanistan. When did you decide that this was a bigger story?
Sebastian Junger: Probably when I was writing about being in the IED attack, the emotional effect on me. I put my own feelings in—all my journalistic instincts were telling me not to, but I felt like there was some real value there, and when I started doing that, I started having a really profound emotional reaction in the writing. I mean, I was dreaming about it and being very affected by what I was writing.
I had a nightmare, and I put it in the book. As a journalist, I had such trepidation about putting a dream in a reported book, but then I realized that we are all having nightmares out here, this is what it's about, so go for it. This is the kind of thing that is going to make this book different from other books about this war.
When I was writing The Perfect Storm, it was a journalistic story about a town that I cared about, but it wasn't personal in that sense. This was. I started dreaming about it every night—literally every night—while I was writing. Once I reached that level of emotional connectedness to the topic, I started writing very, very well. I mean, writers know when they are writing like shit and when they are writing really well. [Laughs] Everybody knows. I just began writing really powerfully, and I thought, I am onto something here.
Details: Do you think that American civilians have an adequate understanding of what's going over there?
Sebastian Junger: Americans don't have an understanding of what it's like to be at a small outpost with 15 other men. I think some Americans have an understanding of the broader military and political issues. I think other people think they have an understanding of those things. But what it's like to be a grunt, no, I don't think Americans have any understanding of that, but I am hoping with my book and my movie, they will.
Details: Have you talked to any of the members of the platoon about the U.S. withdrawal from the Korengal Valley?
Sebastian Junger: Yeah, I have, and they're pretty moved and upset by it. I don't think they're upset in the sense that they want the U.S. to stay and keep losing soldiers there, but I think they are upset in the way that divorce is upsetting. Okay, this marriage isn't working, but it doesn't mean that divorce isn't painful. It's painful for these guys to watch the video that MSNBC shot of the Restrepo outpost burning. You know, it's named after a guy [platoon medic Juan Restrepo] that they all loved, and they sacrificed and worked and fought up there for 15 months. It is a very, very different level of reality from the wider military question: Is it a good decision or a bad decision? They are really not connected, but it is an important level to acknowledge and honor, I think.
Details: Was there anything about American soldiers in particular that surprised or impressed you?
Sebastian Junger: I grew up during Vietnam, and it was a very different military, a very different war, and a very different country. Then, in the 1980s, the military was kind of seen as a dead-end career if you didn't really have anything else to do. I'm speaking as a Massachusetts Democrat; this was the vision of the military that I inherited from my surroundings.
So when I started working with the military, I was not prepared for what it means to have an all-volunteer army. What it means is that no one is bitching about what is happening to them. They don't complain about it because they all chose to sign up. That is very, very different from Vietnam, and it hadn't occurred to me. Not that they don't have complaints about what it feels like to be there, but not about why they are there in the first place.
The other thing that really struck me was how incredibly smart the officers are—and many of the enlisted men too. And they are really dedicated. Any of those officers, from lieutenant on up, could have been at Harvard, could have been running a small business, or they could have been trying to clean up the valley.
Details: In the popular image of the military, say Catch-22 or M*A*S*H, you name it, the officers are always just...
Sebastian Junger: Just bureaucratic idiots. Nope, that is gone.
Details: Finally, why is this a subject matter that you keep returning to?
Sebastian Junger: Well, the stakes in war are very, very high, and so it feels important. The human drama is extremely intense, and so it's riveting. I think that the effect on you as a person and me as a person is pretty profound. Also, I think that in some strange ways, it was very good for me. You combine those three things and you've got a war reporter.
Read Full Article Here