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PrintFrom Cape Cod to Korengal Valley
War. It’s a difficult subject to think about especially at this time of year, and even harder to grasp the idea of what it is like to be a soldier on the front lines. Truro resident Sebastian Junger, author of the best selling book that became the Hollywood blockbuster, The Perfect Storm, set out to do just that. The result is his fourth critically acclaimed book, War (Twelve, 2010). As a Vanity Fair war correspondent, 
Junger took five trips to the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan during the course of 2007 and 2008. The author stayed for nearly a month each time and braved what is widely known as the deadliest outpost in Afghanistan.
With him, Vanity Fair photojournalist Tim Hetherington co-created Restrepo, a documentary filmed while at that outpost and named after a fallen medic from the platoon posted there. Revealing the realities of deployment, capturing the emotions of combat and the brotherly love that makes soldiers long to return to the front lines, Restrepo won the Grand Jury Prize for a domestic documentary at Sundance Film Festival this year.
“My job is to make you feel like you’re at Restrepo. The soldiers couldn’t ask a General why we were here, so we didn’t do that. We wanted everything in the movie to be experiential. We used soldiers in a voice over so it was like you were stuck there for
94 minutes,” says Junger about the making of the film. On November 29, National Geographic channel will air Restrepo and the DVD will be available for purchase shortly after. For more information, visit www.sebastianjunger.com
