Sebastian Junger's War

Last week, I read in the back of New York Magazine that Sebastian Junger would be giving a talk at a Barnes and Noble on the Upper West Side and immediately cleared my calendar. Junger is the author of, among other great works, The Perfect Storm. He started off as a journalist who trimmed trees on the side to make ends meet, but eventually decided that the only way he was going to get his big break was if he was willing to go where few others would, so off he went to Bosnia. He's been covering wars all over the place since then. His most recent book, aptly called War, recounts his experiences with a group of soldiers stationed in the Korengal Valley, one of the hottest conflict zones of Afghanistan. Junger did not carry a weapon and realized pretty early on that it was going to be difficult to maintain journalistic objectivity. He spent alternate months with the small group of soldiers, sleeping, eating, traveling, and dodging bullets whenever they did. Mostly, they were stationed on a thin ridge high above surrounding mountains. In summer it was scorching hot, and in winter bitterly cold. Junger acknowledges that war is hell, but he was bent on trying to determine what it was that makes young men miss it when they're back home again despite the deprivation, terror, and violence they experience on a daily basis during their tours. 

Junger got to  know the men* in "his" unit very well. He said that, given the nature of the situation, there was never a moment when anyone was fewer than ten feet from you. Once, his group was almost blown up when an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) detonated an instant too early, so that the engine block of their Humvee was destroyed rather than the internal compartment where they all sat. This is the sort of experience that leads to some pretty serious interpersonal connections. Junger described the way the soldiers covered each other in fire fights, volunteered to go first into dangerous situations, and generally risked their lives on countless occasions to protect the men they regarded as more than brothers. Junger believes that bond is one of the things that men miss when they come back to civilization because it simply cannot be replicated in any other situation, at least not to the same degree. He also believes they miss the adrenaline. Young men, he pointed out to us, are adrenaline junkies. In fact, in a staggering irony, young men who join the military are statistically safer than they would be if they stayed in the civilian world where they can drink too much, drive too fast, experiment with drugs, and obtain firearms without the kind of training and supervision they get in the military. It was a surprising and interesting observation. He made some fascinating statements about the sadness that comes between bouts of fighting, and about how life in the battlefield is stripped to its bare essentials. There, you know who you are, and you are valued because you do things that matter. Back home, however, Junger pointed out that "it's high school all over again."



Junger was very serious during the talk, largely because of the serious nature of the content, I suppose. (Although, with the faintest suggestion of a smile at the end of his talk, he did threaten to call on us at random if no one had any questions.) Adding further sobriety to the event was the fact that his partner, a film maker named Tim Herrington who accompanied him to Afghanistan and with whom he made the award-winning documentary Restrepo, was killed recently in Libya while covering the conflict there. Junger gazed levelly out at the audience with blue eyes that shone out of his tanned, weather-beaten face. He spoke slowly and with effortless eloquence. His button-down shirt was open enough to reveal a strip of his broad, hairy chest, and his stance behind the podium was wide and steady. Oh yeah, this was a guy who's seen some things.



Having learned from past experience, I had purchased a copy of his book on Amazon about a week before the talk, and so as soon as the applause died down, I vaulted out of my second row seat (I got there really early and was rewarded with a spot front and center) and was fourth or fifth in line. As usual, I got completely tongue-tied when it was my turn to meet Junger. I thanked him for coming and then he thanked me for coming. It was a bit awkward. Luckily, an employee had been writing our names on post-it notes and sticking them on the title pages to streamline the process, and Junger was able to carry on without much more participation from me. Now I've got yet another signed book for the collection, and the copy of War I requested is waiting at my local public library for pick-up, since I obviously can't carry my pristine autographed edition around in my purse to read on the subway.

New York is consistently a terribly expensive place to live. But free events like this one really balance things out. Well, a little.

*The unit Junger followed was composed entirely of men, so while he acknowledged the contribution of women to the armed forces near the beginning of his talk, he never mentioned women again after that.