TOW #12: IRB "War"

War is a concept that is almost incomprehensible to those who have never experienced it first hand. It matters not how many times someone has seen Saving Private Ryan or American Sniper; ultimately, war is still fantasized and glorified to them. One might think that they have a good idea of the PTSD and mental trauma that soldiers experience, but they never will until they find themselves in a firefight. Sebastian Jungr, author of the critically acclaimed and harrowing nonfiction account Into the Storm takes on the challenge of portraying the effects of war in their most raw state in his book War, an account of his time in the Korengal valley of Afghanistan while on assignment from magazine Vanity Fair in 2007. In this book, Jungr does not glorify the valor and courage of war but rather presents it at face value in its rawest form. In doing this, he uses extremely vivid and lifelike imagery to thrust the reader into the real world of war and its barbaric, dehumanizing nature.


Written for the American whose only exposure to war has been in the form of TV, movies, or short news clips, Jungr's main purpose in writing War is to objectively expose average Americans to the harrowing nature of war. Jungr spent varying increments of time over two years in the Korengal valley with American soldiers at the extremely remote and constantly imperiled Restrepo Outpost. His accounts of the constant threat of Taliban insurgency are extremely detailed and tense, and he perfectly encapsulates the constant state of heightened anxiety that the soldiers in Korengal constantly experienced. In one expository passage, Jungr's imagery perfectly encapsulates the constant grinding stress that the soldiers of the Korengal endure: "First Squad goes thirty-eight days without taking a shower or changing their clothes, and by the end their uniforms are so impregnated with salt that they can stand up by themselves. The men's sweat reeks of ammonia because they've long since burned off all their fat and are now breaking down muscle.  There are wolves up in the high peals that howl at night and mountain lions that creep through the KOP looking for food [...] one species of bird sounds exactly like incoming rocket propelled grenades; the men call them "RPG birds" and can't keep themselves from flinching whenever they hear them" (Jungr 53). This exhaustive passage, a passage fraught with tormenting imagery, takes the reader right to the heart of the Korengal. The reader feels as if they are there themselves, waiting in a constant state of fear and exhaustion for the next RPG to soar past the outpost, or worse, hit it. Jungr's imagery appeals heavily to the reader's sense of sympathy as it creates a feeling of constant suspense that could be cut with a knife, or the gunfire of a Taliban sniper. The reader is easily able to see how soldiers are in a constant state of mental and physical stress, and this reveals to the reader that soldiers are in a much worse state than short apathetic news clippings and movie glorifications admit. Jungr shows us that war is not a fantasy of valor and heroics, but instead a purgatory--constantly waiting for hell to erupt.