Summary Of Sebastian Junger's War

In the book “War” by Sebastian Junger, people experienced combat for the first time in similar ways. When they got to the Korengal Valley many of the men like O'Byrne had never been shot at before. O’Byrne when he first got into a situation where he was being shot at “The first thing he did was stand up and look around -Pg 11”. He later says to Vandenberge “Fuck, I can't believe they just shot at me -Pg 11” because he was shocked that someone was actually shooting at him and trying to kill him. That shock can be seen later in this quote “We knew that we were going to get hit” “But on some level it’s always shocking that someone out there actually wants you dead -Pg 28”. The bullets fired in combat themselves are described by O'Byrne as sounding …show more content…
One example of that, out of many would be when “Sergeant Padilla is cooking Philly cheesesteaks for the men at Firebase Phoenix and has just yelled, “Come and get it before I get killed,” when an RPG sails into the compound and takes off his arm.” “Pemble helps load him into a humvee, and for weeks afterward he has dreams of Padilla standing in front of him with his arm missing -Pg 54 into 55”. After losing a man in battle many platoons fought harder than ever before and sometimes name places after their fallen brothers. They named the new command post set up after Doc Restrepos death after him and after Rougle was shot and killed they referred to the hill he died on as “Rougle’s Hill -Pg 116” out of respect and in honor of their fallen friends. After Rougle’s death Cortez said.” I just wanted to kill everything that came up that wasn't American. I actually didn't care who came up- man, woman, or child, I still would’ve done something -Pg 106”. This part of the book brought some tears to my eyes because of the amount of sadness felt by these men after losing Staff Sergeant Rougle’s. Cortez in the coming months “Every night he’d dream he was back on the mountain trying to run fast enough to make things turn out differently -Pg 106” and these dreams had a toll on him and he did not want to sleep because he had to keep …show more content…
Vaughn when he was 11 years old 9/11 happened and because of that he decided join the US army. Jungar talks about ending the violence and says that if there was a talk between “Not the American and Taliban commanders but the actual guys behind the guns- couldn't somehow sit down together and work this out -Pg 170” because they all have families that they want to return to and they are living in similarly poor conditions. Later they hear two Taliban commanders talking about American presence in valley “One of them was making the point that if Americans were willing to build roads and clinics in the valley , maybe they shouldn't be attacked -Pg 171”. Violence has only one place in the world and it is only used to fight out one's political