WAR: Junger’s year of living dangerously

Not since Tim O’Brien introduced us to Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s platoon in the “The Things They Carried,” has an author so successfully captured the primitive experience of combat as Sebastian Junger in his new classic, “WAR.”

Comprised of bitter, beautifully observed truths butting up against unthinkable flashes of genuine panic, Junger touches a raw, exposed nerve that exists beneath top-fold headlines and political pantomime. He’s after the soldier’s genuine experience. And yes, that’s often a truly terrible and sickening place to go.

It’s also makes for one of the most compelling love stories I’ve ever read.

Of course, the book that made Junger famous was “The Perfect Storm”—his work of creative non-fiction that ultimately introduced America to the Andrea Gail, a post-ER George Clooney and the English language’s most overused idiom to describe a rare combination of circumstances that will drastically aggravate a situation.

But this is what Sebastian Junger does best. He tells the story of ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances.

In this case, he’s turned his keen eye to the reality of combat—the fear, the pride and the trust that exists between men who live and die by their absolute commitment to each another. His on-the-ground account follows a single platoon from the 2^nd battalion of the U.S. Army through a 15-month tour of duty on the very edge of American military power in the hellish Korengal Valley.

In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, Junger made clear the men he covered “were not interested in the rest of the war and they were not much concerned with whether it was just, winnable or even well executed.” They fought for one another.

This fact comes in contrast to much of what’s been written about the why we’re fighting in Afghanistan. Whether or not we’re “winning.” How many troops it will take to achieve victory. What “victory” even means. When all’s said and done, there’s little record of who our soldiers are, how they live and what they learn when they’re at war.

Junger doesn’t waste time grappling with cosmic truths in this deeply profound book. Rather, he captures the futility of the newspaper headlines and political debates surrounding Afghanistan that plainly overlook the fact that young men on both sides of a distant valley are getting blown to pieces every single day. Streaming this tale through the hysterically cracked prism that a writer only finds when he’s getting shot at and mortared on a daily basis, Junger tells their story with an authorial grit that speaks to the nature of the men he chronicles.

As he admits, “war is insanely exciting;” Junger experiences everything and brings his reader along for the ride. He tags along for all the tense foot patrols, hugs the floor during mortar attacks, and even gets blown up by a roadside bomb.