Journalists Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington spent about a year in Afghanistan with the Second Platoon, B Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. They wrote articles for Vanity Fair about what they saw and produced a documentary called Restrepo. Both the film and the remote outpost the troops were defending were named for PFC Juan Restrepo, the platoon medic who was killed early in their tour of duty. Junger and Hetherington made ten separate trips of about a month each to the Korengal Valley, one of the most deadly pieces of terrain in Afghanistan.
Click here for the movie’s website.
And here is the trailer for Restrepo, which is up for an Academy Award on Sunday evening.