Strong bonds and brotherhood on the battlefield

Sebastian Junger, the war reporter turned film director, talks to Andrew Anthony about fear, filming in Afghanistan and his bond with the late Tim Hetherington

Sebastian Junger is the author of several best-selling books, including The Perfect Storm. His journalism has focused on war reporting, and in 2007 he and British photographer Tim Hetherington went to the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan and made Restrepo, a film about American soldiers defending a small hillside outpost named after a dead comrade.

It was nominated for a documentary Oscar. Hetherington was killed this year on assignment in Libya.

You were in your late 40s and the soldiers you filmed in Restrepo were in their early 20s or younger. Was it difficult to make a connection?

Sebastian Junger: The combat environment has the effect of flattening out civilian identities. If you're young or old, or a graduate from Harvard or the son of a farmer from Alabama, or if you're gay or straight or good-looking or ugly: none of those things matters much in combat, as long as you can conform to the group expectations. Once they realised I wasn't going to fall behind on patrols or cause a problem during firefights, they were okay with me.

The Korengal Valley is said to be the deadliest place in Afghanistan. What was your first impression when you arrived?

It looked like Colorado, like the American west. It was very beautiful. And I just thought, what a great place to go camping or kayaking. If it wasn't Afghanistan, it would be a haven for outdoor adventure sports.

What was your longest stint there?

We would do a month at a time. We each did five trips of roughly one month. I think Tim stayed for six weeks once. That was the record.

Did you ever feel bored?

Oh God yes, many times. Everybody did. One morning, the lieutenant walked in and said under his breath: "Please someone attack us today." I was definitely part of that group psychology of being so bored that we were hoping to be attacked.

How did you deal with fear?

The worst fear is before big operations, before an anticipated attack. But it's like public speaking; no matter how nervous you get beforehand, once you start speaking you're so focused you forget that you're nervous.

Combat's very much that way. There's also a point where you get to a moment of fatalism, where you think, okay whatever's going to happen is going to happen.

Did you and Tim share the same ideas about how you wanted to make the film?

We didn't want anything in the film that was not in the Korengal Valley.

So we didn't even want a voiceover narration because there's no narration in reality.

We wanted to create the illusion that you're there; we didn't want anything outside the reality to break that dream.

We didn't have an agenda, other than this is what it feels like to be a soldier in combat.

Nonetheless, some people have judged the film in political terms.

A lot of conservative people, who are pro-military, saw the movie as a vindication of their beliefs.

Then there are people on the left who were convinced it was an anti-war movie and that this was the ultimate denunciation of warfare.

We would just smile to ourselves.

How did Tim's death in Libya affect you?

I've known a couple of journalists who got killed but none was as close to me as Tim.

We were in the Korengal, off and on, for a year and then pretty continually for another couple of years we were making the movie.

That bound us together emotionally, financially, professionally, in every sense. Then we went through the whole crazy ride of all the media and the Oscars.

By the end, we were finishing each other's sentences. We really thought as one. So it was absolutely devastating.

What kind of man was he?

He was a really bright spirit, always grinning in the British way.

He was very intense, very smart, but in addition to being smart his mind went at 500rpm all the time. He wasn't always right about things but he was always shaking things up intellectually.

He also had a lot of demons. I don't know his personal story too well, because he was quite private, but he was driven by something to some very dark places.

That condition is not unusual among war reporters.

That's right. But he didn't have the usual addictions that go with it. He wasn't a womaniser, chain smoker or an alcoholic.

I think he was intellectually and physically in motion.

You've said that you won't be returning to war reporting.

Seeing what Tim's death did to me and my wife and others, a lightbulb went on. I didn't want to be the cause of that pain to the people I'm closest to. I've done this for 20 years and there is a point you come to where you're repeating the same stunt.

I'll continue reporting from overseas but if I find myself getting shot at - this is how I explained it to my wife - I will consider it embarrassing and a personal failure in a similar way to as if I had a car accident.

What are you currently working on?

I'm working on a film about Tim and I'm starting a medical training programme for freelance journalists, a three-day training course in battlefield medicine. It will be three times a year in New York, London and Beirut.

We're hoping to make the certification an industry norm in the next few years. Tim's wound didn't have to be mortal. He bled out but there are things you can do about that, but no one around him was equipped to do them and so he died.

Will history judge Afghanistan a worthwhile war?

For me, the criterion is whether it increases or decreases human suffering. We killed bin Laden and dismantled al-Qaeda, which are two good things, and we brought civilian casualties down from 400,000 in the 1990s to about 10,000 in the decade that Nato's been there. If we pull out of Afghanistan in a way that doesn't precipitate a slide back into civil war - not that it would be perfect - then history should judge it a success.

- OBSERVER