Americans In Afghanistan

In Afghanistan men soldier well or not very long. The British Army found out the hard way. Three times they tried and three times they lost The Russian Army did too but they had the sense to try it just the once. They lost too. The American Army are learning and how ever long it takes they will lose too.

In the past year, contributing editor Sebastian Junger and contributing photographer Tim Hetherington, winner of the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year award, returned to Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley to embed with Battle Company, a unit of the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade. Hetherington’s photos provide an intimate glimpse of what life is like for these soldiers as they struggle to push back the Taliban and win over the local population. Related: “Return to the Valley of Death,” by Sebastian Junger. Plus: A Web-exclusive slide show of Hetherington’s soldier portraits.

photographs by Tim Hetherington WEB EXCLUSIVE September 3, 2008

A soldier on patrol in the Korengal Valley.

 

From their base in the Korengal Valley, the men [ invaders ] of Battle Company fire a mortar at insurgent [ i.e. rightful owners - Editor ] positions.

 

Afghan boys gather near a school in Aliabad, where Junger was pinned down by enemy fire a year earlier. The RPG is in good condition.
 

 

Soldiers shoot at enemy forces across the valley. They are using the Belgian MAG with the 7.62 round and a sight. It has to be better than the M60.

 

Captain Dan Kearney listens to a villager who came to the army base to demand the release of a detainee named Naim. When Kearney assured him that Naim would be returned once he had been questioned, the man said that there would be trouble otherwise.

 

Sergeant Tanner Stichter fingerprints and photographs a suspect who was rounded up during a patrol in the village of Karangal.

 

Stichter lifts weights at the Restrepo outpost, which the soldiers named in honor of Private Juan Restrepo, the platoon medic, who was killed in an ambush in 2007.

 

A soldier’s drawing on a piece of wood. “Damn the valley” is an often repeated phrase among the men of Battle Company when discussing the Korengal, which has been the scene of some of the war’s fiercest fighting.