Meanwhile, the third platoon of Charlie Company is about to return from another deployment.
In the spring of 2007, American soldiers in the Second Platoon of Battle Company, part of a regiment in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, began a 15-month deployment in the Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan.
The documentary, "Restrepo," about a remote base in the Korangal Valley, led them to embed with the Second Platoon of Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team for over a year, and they did get hurt.
On the recent run from Tikrit, some members of the Third Platoon of the 42nd Military Police Company, a National Guard unit, complained of how the company was overworked and its resources stretched too thin.
So when the second platoon of Company C, Fifth Battalion, can roll in from the field to the tent city that has sprouted here this month to house the first of the Army's new Stryker Brigades, from Fort Lewis, Wash., the platoon's 35 soldiers relish small comforts and reminders of home.
During ten different trips between May 2007 and June 2008, Junger and Hetherington embedded with the Second Platoon of Battle Company of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade, in the mountainous Korengal Valley of Afghanistan, a region frequently used by the Taliban to stage operations and considered one of the most dangerous areas in the country.
Hetherington and Junger embedded themselves for a year with the Second Platoon of Battle Company of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade in the Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan to shoot the bulk of Restrepo and created a non-fiction film that approximates the experience of a lengthy military deployment in the country as much as would be possible without actually going there oneself.
(Three soldiers from the Third Platoon, on condition of anonymity, were willing to discuss their deployment and the crimes with me.
In his days as a marine lieutenant leading one of the first platoons to invade Iraq, he even allowed a Rolling Stone reporter to leave recording devices in his troops' humvees.
