Sebastian Junger - War

The governor is having none of it. “We’ve all done jihad and lost family members,” he says. “But the Taliban are shooting at Afghan soldiers. Why? They are Muslims too. If you’re not man enough to keep the Taliban out of the valley, then I’m sorry, you’re going to get bombed.”

For a minute the young man is too stunned to respond. Then there’s a sudden knocking of gunfire from down-valley and Kearney rushes out of the room to direct the mortars. Second Platoon has gotten hit on their way back from Loy Kalay, pinned down in the open stretch just outside the base. They make it into the wire behind a curtain of high explosives and the shura lurches on to the rumble of explosions and A-10 gun runs. After an hour or so the elders gather themselves up and walk back out the front gate, and Tim and I catch a switch-out that’s headed up to Restrepo.

We come walking in the south gate late that afternoon and drop our packs in front of First Squad hooch. Nothing has changed except that Airborne is now big enough to go out on patrols. I’ve been coming to this hilltop for almost a year, and to my amazement the place has started to carry the slight tang of home.

COFFEE AT RESTREPO WAS A PROBLEM BECAUSE NO ONE drank it so you were more or less on your own in that regard. Certain MREs include packets of coffee, powdered milk, and sugar, but I always found it hard to remember which ones they were — as opposed to, say, the breakfast tea or cider mix — and that meant pawing through the garbage to find enough ingredients for a good cup. Once the precious powders were in hand I’d go to the command center and empty a bottle of water into the electric kettle and plug it in. The command center was a dark, secure bunker next to Gillespie’s bunk where the radios were stacked, and there was usually so little light that finding the kettle required some feeling around.

While the water was heating I’d scout a place to sit. Pretty much everything was uncomfortable at Restrepo — there was one chair but it was almost always taken, the sandbags were hard as rocks, and the round plastic Javelin case next to First Squad hooch made your ass numb in minutes — but finding a good seat was important. You’d only get one cup of coffee a day, and considering what’s not available at Restrepo, that cup was pretty much the most pleasurable thing that was going to happen to you until you got home. I liked to drink my coffee sitting with my back against a Hesco beneath the south-facing SAW position. Nothing random could hit you there, and you were inside the courtyard looking north up the valley. In front of me was a pile of sandbags holding up a fiberglass pole for the concealment netting, and I could brace my legs on the sandbags and use my knees to write against. The netting broke up the direct sunlight and gave things a mottled, wobbly feel that could make you dizzy if you stared at the shadows for too long.

I usually put together my coffee around midmorning and then settled into my spot to work on my notes, but one morning Gillespie sends out a patrol to Obenau and we don’t come back until midday. We come walking into the wire to word from Prophet that we’re about to get hit. For weeks there’s been intel about ammo coming into the valley — mortars, rockets, crates of Dishka rounds — the kinds of things you’d use against a fortified position rather than men on foot. The attack is supposed to come around 12:30 that afternoon, but the hour comes and goes without a shot, and the men sink back into their slow-motion heat trance. It’s one of those dead afternoons in the Korengal where nothing moves and you barely have the energy to wave the flies off your face. I mix up my coffee and settle into my spot to talk to Gillespie. Richardson is brushing his teeth. A few Afghan soldiers are standing around the ammo hooch. Most of the Americans are in their bunks. Airborne is asleep in the shade near the muddy spot created by the water bladder.

I’m just raising the mug to my lips for a first sip when the air around us compresses with a WHUMP . Gillespie and I just look at each other — could it be? Then comes a flurry of sick little snaps and the inevitable staccato sound in the distance. That first burst, I find out later, hit the guard tower and splintered plywood a few inches from Pemble’s head. Richardson is on the SAW so fast that he has to spit out his last mouthful of toothpaste between bursts. Gillespie jumps up and runs into the radio room, and everywhere men are grabbing their vests and sprinting for their positions. My cup of coffee gets knocked over almost immediately. On the radio I can hear Kearney yelling, “ALL BATTLE ELEMENTS THIS IS BATTLE-SIX THIS IS THE TIC WE WERE TALKIN’ ABOUT THE KOP IS TAKING INDIRECT, OVER.”

“Indirect” means mortars. They’re shot upward out of a tube and come down from above, which makes them harder to take cover from. (They’re also harder to suppress because, unlike guns, mortars can be completely out of sight behind a ridge. All the mortarman needs is a spotter calling in corrections to walk the rounds onto the target.) The KOP is essentially the Mothership, and without her, every outpost in the valley would be indefensible. The job of the outposts is to keep the KOP from getting attacked so that the KOP, in return, can support the outposts. Grenades and mortars start coming in and detonating against our own fortifications and we’re taking gunfire from three different directions to the south. Gillespie is out on the ammo hooch trying to see where the grenades are coming from and shouting into his radio and the Afghans are standing around reluctant and confused and the Americans are running shirtless and whooping to their guns. During the lulls they put wads of chew under their lips or light cigarettes. Olson’s on the .50 alternating bursts with Jones, who’s above him on the 240, and Pemble is so upset about almost getting killed that he empties a whole can of linked grenades into the ridges to the south.

The fight lasts ten or fifteen minutes and then the A-10s show up and tilt into their dives. Ninety rounds a second the size of beer cans unzipping the mountainsides with a sound like the sky ripping. The men look up and whoop when they hear it, a punishment so unnegotiable it might as well have come from God.

One night a few weeks later I’m sitting on the ammo hooch listening to the monkeys in the peaks. A temperature inversion has filled the valley with mist and the mist is silver in the moonlight and almost liquid. Airborne is asleep but keeps popping his head up to growl at some threat impossibly far below us in the valley. There’s been a big fight over by the Pakistan border and F-15s and -16s have been powering overhead all evening looking for people to kill. O’Byrne wanders out and we start talking. His head is shaved but dirt sticks to the stubble so you can see where his hair ought to be. He says he signed a contract with the Army that’s almost up, and he has to figure out whether to reenlist.

“Combat is such an adrenaline rush,” he says. “I’m worried I’ll be looking for that when I get home and if I can’t find it, I’ll just start drinking and getting in trouble. People back home think we drink because of the bad stuff, but that’s not true… we drink because we miss the good stuff.”

O’Byrne is also worried about being alone. He hasn’t been out of earshot of his platoonmates for two years and has no idea how he’ll react to solitude. He’s never had to get a job, find an apartment, or arrange a doctor’s appointment because the Army has always done those things for him. All he’s had to do is fight. And he’s good at it, so leading a patrol up 1705 causes him less anxiety than, say, moving to Boston and finding an apartment and a job. He has little capacity for what civilians refer to as “life skills”; for him, life skills literally keep you alive. Those are far simpler and more compelling than the skills required at home. “In the Korengal, almost every problem could get settled by getting violent faster than the other guy,” O’Byrne told me. “Do that at home and it’s not going to go so well.”