War by Sebastian Junger is a book I read because I’ve been curious about what Army life is like for combat soldiers these days. It has been almost 20 years since I earned my Combat Infantryman Badge in Somalia and after reading the book it seems that not much has changed.
For over 15 months the author Sebastian Junger followed a single platoon that was experiencing the most enemy contact and the most intense fighting in all of the United States military, this was in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan. There are plenty of books that could have been written from the battles that Junger was witnessed to and I am sure those books will be written by someone. You see wars always produce paperback novels of war tales and glory chasing. I’ve tried reading these but I usually get a sense that there is more fiction that fact being told. Junger is more journalist than story teller so I suspected his account might give a better account of what it is to be a 21st Century combat soldier. I was not let down.
The pages offered a glimpse into more how the men interact with each other than tales of battle field action, though there was some of that mixed in as well, but it was needed so we could learn how men react to such horror. And I can tell you that Yunger was able to put into words many of the byproducts of combat that I have never seen expressed anywhere else. Take this paragraph for example:
War is a big and sprawling word that brings a lot of human suffering into the conversation, but combat is a different matter. Combat is the smaller game that young men fall in love with, and any solution to the human problem of war will have to take into account the psyches of these young men. For some reason there is a profound and mysterious gratification to the reciprocal agreement to protect another person with your life, and combat is virtually the only situation in which that happens regularly. These hillsides of loose shale and holly trees are where the men feel not most alive – that you can get skydiving – but the most utilized. The most necessary. The most clear and certain of purpose. If young men could get that feeling at home, no one would ever want to go to war again, but they can’t. So here sits Sergeant Brendan O’Bryrne, one month before the end of deployment, seriously contemplating signing back up.
Now I can no way compare myself to the men in this book because they experienced very intense combat for an extended period of time. But I do know exactly what that paragraph is talking about. When I was in Somalia I came to the conclusion that such a deployment was life accelerated, life speed up to such a speed that did not allow for error. After I am done writing this I will pack up my stuff, load up my bike and ride home without the smallest fear of anything happen or a shred of doubt that I will arrive at my intended destination in one piece. Sure I am aware that something could happen but odds are nothing will. On a deployment and in combat this is never the case. Ever task, every mundane activity has a risk. A very tangible risk that you must remain aware of if you are to survive. “Stay alert stay alive” is a cliche that the Army drills into your mind during basic training because even a moment of accepted comfort will get you killed.
Strangely enough the desire to stay alert and stay alive is more for your desire to be there when your platoon needs you. If you do something stupid, make a mistake, it may very well be the guy next to you that is killed because of it. This is why men will run through bullets to get to someone. This is why medics have no regard for their surrounding when treating the wounded. This is something you will not understand unless you’ve experienced it. Very few places in life require this level of tangible dedication to your peer group.
There is something else the book addresses that few people have understand about my military experience. When you enlist in the Army you are given the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test (ASVAB). The ASVAB is the military’s version of the SATs. When I took it I scored good enough to have my pick of Military Occupational Specialties (Army jobs) and I choose Infantry. My 19 year old mind did this because I want to join the “real Army,” I wanted to be a “real soldier.” This answer makes sense to few because they see anyone in the Army as a real soldier. Even before I became an Infantryman I knew that was not that case. The Infantry is different and these words from the book shed some light on that:
They’re combat Infantry, the ultimate point of all this, the most replaceable part of the whole deadly show. (Two years earlier a story made the rounds about a MEDEVAC pilot who disobeyed direct orders, turned off his radio, and landed in heavy ground fire to pick up a wounded Battle Company soldier. The man lived, but the incident gave some soldiers the feeling that if the military had to choose between a grunt and a Black Hawk, they’d probably go with the Black Hawk.) The men take a perverse pride in this, cultivate a certain disdain for anyone who has it better, which is basically everyone. Combat Infantry carry the most, eat the worst, die the fastest, sleep the least, and have the most to fear. But they’re the real soldiers, the only ones conducting what can be considered “war” in the most classic sense, and everyone knows it. I once asked someone in Second Platoon why frontline grunts aren’t more admired.
“Because everyone just thinks we’re stupid” the man said.
“But you do all the fighting.”
“Yeah,” he said, “exactly.”
