Synopsis
In WAR Sebastian Junger gives breathtaking insight into the truths of war— the fear, the honor, and the trust among men. His on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan's KorengalValley. Through the experiences of these young men at war, he shows what it means to fight, to serve, and to face down mortal danger on a regular basis.
The Barnes & Noble Review
In mid-April, the U.S. military executed what it called a "strategic withdrawal" from Korengal, a small valley in northeast Afghanistan that it had tried for four years to pacify. Dozens of U.S. soldiers and many more Afghans had died violently there. When the U.S. pulled out, the valley was still so dangerous that officers had to offer village elders six thousand gallons of fuel as a bribe not to attack the convoys during their drive to safety.
This is about as close to an acknowledgment of defeat as one is likely to see in this war. Sebastian Junger's new book, War, is a depiction of one year in the life of the U.S. soldiers who tried to turn the occupation of Korengal around, and whose battle against a steady barrage of Taliban attacks was eventually judged to be not worth the trouble. Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and a reporter for Vanity Fair, visited Korengal's forts and outposts serially for one year, and his dispatches present a sometimes unbearably gritty look at the daily life of soldiers there. As a narrative of combat in Afghanistan from the U.S. ground perspective, the book has no rivals. It makes one wonder how any army could hold ground in Korengal, and indeed why it would even want to.