From 2007-2008, Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm) traveled to Aghanistan’s embattled Korengal Valley and embedded in a series of month-long stints with a unit from the 173rd Airborne Brigade. The result is WAR, a 304-page portrait of Second Platoon, Battle Company. Also part of the project: Restrepo, a 94-minute film about the same unit that Junger produced with photographer Tim Hetherington. The film won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, and Publisher’s Weekly called the book “an unforgettable portrait of men under fire.”
We caught up with Junger yesterday, after a reading he gave at the Half King, the bar he owns with fellow writer Scott Anderson. We asked Junger about writing the book, making the movie, and some of his other pioneering moves—like the way he’s letting readers send questions directly to members of the platoon via his Web site, and the fact that video will be folded into the electronic version of the book. Brendan O’Byrne, one of the soldiers Junger profiled, made a guest appearance at the reading, so further down, we ask him what it’s like to be on the other end of the notebook—to be a soldier in a unit in which a journalist has been embedded.
Q&A with Sebastian Junger
GalleyCat: Was it hard to sell publishers on yet another book about the war?
Junger: I think there was skepticism in the publishing industry about another war book. I made it clear I was going to do a different kind of war book. It was not going to be political. But, still, I think there was skepticism. My name helped a little bit, I think. They trusted me.
How Junger got into film, after the jump.
A movie’s quite a leap from books and magazine articles. How did you decide to do that?
I’d already started shooting video on some of my assignments [for Vanity Fair, where Junger is a contributing editor], to use as B-roll if I was invited on network TV or cable news to talk about my article. When my articles come out, sometimes Anderson Cooper or someone has me on. So if I can give them B-roll that I shot while I was there, so much the better. So it was a very naive thought: I’ll just make a documentary.
Was it hard to do both at the same time—the text reporting and the video reporting?
No, it was fine. The video camera is just another information-gathering tool. I would keep my notebooks, and there were some situations that were better situated to capturing in a notebook. Like a conversation among a bunch of people. It’s really confusing on video. So I just figured out which situations worked best with each.
It’s an interesting sign of the times that you’re making it possible for your readers to get in touch with your subjects directly. Does that change authorship, now that the reader’s experience of the story might no longer be mediated exclusively through you?
This connection between the soldiers and the readers was an afterthought, but I thought there was a lot of potential there. People have never before been able to reach out to the subjects of a book and ask them a question directly and personally. It just seemed like an interesting opportunity to create a dialogue. And I feel like there’s particularly a gulf between the soldiers and the civilian population in these wars and that it would be really good to establish a dialogue.
How are you incorporating video into the e-version of the book?
There are a lot of scenes in the book where I was shooting video while those scenes were happening, so I have footage showing what I was writing about…. So there will be two or three minutes of video throughout the eBook where you can click on a paragraph and watch a bit of video about that scene.
How does that change the book?
The two have to be able to stand on their own, or you’re not doing your job as a writer. But I think it’ll be a really interesting experience for people to read a book, watch a movie about the same topic, and then even see video attached to certain scenes in the book. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but it’ll definitely be interesting, and it will definitely be different.
Sebastian Junger and Brendan O’Byrne
Q&A with Brendan O’Byrne
We’ve heard a lot from reporters about what it’s like to embed with the military, but we haven’t heard much about what it’s like to be on the other side of the notebook—to be a soldier under the microscope of an embedded reporter. So we asked O’Byrne, a sergeant in Second Platoon who left the Army in December 2008, what it was like to have journalists embed with his unit.
GalleyCat: What was it like to have reporters with you 24/7? You’re doing your job, and then all of a sudden, there’re these guys and they’re watching you and writing down what you’re doing. Is it weird? Do you get used to it?
O’Byrne: It depended on the people. There were some reporters out there that we didn’t like, so it was very awkward when they were out there. But Sebastian and Tim, we enjoyed their company. When they were out there, they didn’t annoy us. They fit in. They were “one of the guys.” We got used to them being out there. They just became part of us.
What were some things other reporters did that annoyed the platoon?
One reporter said to us: “I thought you guys get shot at. We haven’t gotten shot at at all.” And we’re like, “Are you kidding me?” They were totally unaware of what was going on. They were walking down a road, during a patrol, in a dangerous situation, and they took a picture of themselves, both of them, with big smiles.
Tim and Sebastian were very aware of their role, and of what they should and shouldn’t say, what they should and shouldn’t do. They followed our lead. That’s why they became so close to us. They followed our rules, and they made them their rules. But when you come into a situation, and you start playing by your own rules, it doesn’t work. You don’t get the right stuff. People get standoffish.
During the Q&A after Junger’s reading, someone asked how the platoon felt about the fact that Junger included the not-so-flattering parts of their lives in his book, along with the stuff that reflected well on them. Junger replied that the soldiers didn’t care, they didn’t even want their story prettied up. They just wanted it told honestly.
That’s 100% accurate. We didn’t want to look like heroes. We didn’t want to look losers. We just wanted to look like us. When writing about someone, accuracy is key. Realism is important. And Sebastian got that. Even when you pretty something up, guys get mad about it. They say, That’s not what happened. It’s tainted. And then it becomes a story they can’t be proud of, because they have to explain to someone, that’s not really what happened.
Have you read the book or seen the movie?
I’ve seen the movie, and read the book. They’re pretty powerful. There are certain parts of that movie I just can’t watch. The scene with Rock Avalanche [an operation during which the platoon comes under fire and a member of the unit gets killed]. It’s so real. It’s the closest thing that America’s going to get to an actual deployment, other than being there.
Interviews edited for length and clarity