“During, I was pretty calm,” he says, now safe at home in New York. “But fear is a weird thing. All the feelings that you should have had in the moment come back when you watch it again. That’s why soldiers go into this avoidant behavior whenever the topic of war comes up. They don’t want to deal with it.”Wary of the overarching politics of the war and determined to portray the experiences of the American men on the ground, Junger and Hetherington spent ten months filming embedded with Battle Company, 173rd Airborne Division, in the Korengal. A supply route for Taliban fighters on the Pakistan border, the valley saw some of the heaviest fighting in the war. They named the film after the company’s medic, PFC Juan Restrepo, who was killed in action early in the deployment. An outpost, built on the spot he died and named in his honour, became a source of hope as well as a strategic keystone and surrogate home for the beleaguered men.“Ask yourself: what is the core of the military machine?” says Hetherington. “We like to kid ourselves that it’s, you know, attack helicopters and tanks and missiles. It’s not. The heart of the war machine is actually a group of men. It’s brotherhood.” Few films portray this oft-forgotten fact better.

“During, I was pretty calm,” he says, now safe at home in New York. “But fear is a weird thing. All the feelings that you should have had in the moment come back when you watch it again. That’s why soldiers go into this avoidant behavior whenever the topic of war comes up. They don’t want to deal with it.”
Wary of the overarching politics of the war and determined to portray the experiences of the American men on the ground, Junger and Hetherington spent ten months filming embedded with Battle Company, 173rd Airborne Division, in the Korengal. A supply route for Taliban fighters on the Pakistan border, the valley saw some of the heaviest fighting in the war. They named the film after the company’s medic, PFC Juan Restrepo, who was killed in action early in the deployment. An outpost, built on the spot he died and named in his honour, became a source of hope as well as a strategic keystone and surrogate home for the beleaguered men.
“Ask yourself: what is the core of the military machine?” says Hetherington. “We like to kid ourselves that it’s, you know, attack helicopters and tanks and missiles. It’s not. The heart of the war machine is actually a group of men. It’s brotherhood.” Few films portray this oft-forgotten fact better.

32 notes
Posted on Thursday, 10 May
Tagged as: 173rd Airborne division   Afghanistan   Korengal valley   Restrepo   Tim Hetherington   War   military   U.S. Army   Soldiers  
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