Sebastian Junger's 'Last Patrol' Closes His Chapter on War, Looks at Life Outside Combat

— -- For the better part of 20 years, journalist and author Sebastian Junger covered the adrenaline highs and the soul-crushing lows of combat in war zones from Bosnia to Afghanistan.

Junger embedded for nearly a year with the 173rd Airborne, fighting the Taliban in the Afghan valley of Korengal. He and the late war photographer Tim Hetherington risked their lives to bring “Nightline” incredible battle footage in 2007 for a joint project with Vanity Fair. Their report and footage went on to become the Oscar-nominated documentary “Restrepo,” named after a platoon medic killed in battle, as well as a follow-up documentary, "Korengal."

Hetherington died in yet another, different war -- he was killed in 2011 by shrapnel while covering the conflict in Libya. He was 40 years old.

Hetherington’s death was a turning point for Junger.

“Because Tim died I was never going to cover war again,” he told “Nightline.” “I was done. I got out.”

While mourning the loss of his dear friend, Junger discovered a chilling piece of old footage Hetherington filmed while the two were on a train from Washington, D.C., to New York. That’s where his newest HBO documentary film, “The Last Patrol,” begins.

“When we found that clip on his hard drive it was absolutely heartbreaking and chilling,” Junger said. “Tim was killed in Libya in combat and on a trip that I was supposed to be on, and I couldn't go at the last minute, and it left me with a lot of complicated feelings.”

In the footage, the two talked about taking a trip following America’s railroads. Watching the tape, Junger said, “I felt incredibly guilty, that I should've been there with him, maybe I could have saved him, maybe it should have been me instead of him. I felt like I had abandoned him and failed him.”

“It reminded me of all these soldiers that I knew who felt like they were responsible for the deaths of their friends when they obviously weren't,” he continued. “It's part of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. It was pretty debilitating for a while.”

So Junger decided to set out on “The Last Patrol” with a new band of brothers, just as he and Hetherington vowed they would, to rediscover America after being in so many battles overseas. Junger made the 300-mile walk, following railroad lines from D.C. to Pennsylvania, with Guillermo Cervera, the photographer who had been holding Hetherington’s hand when he died in Libya, and Brendan O’Byrne and Dave Roels, two soldiers he and Hetherington had known in Afghanistan.

Walking along U.S. railroad tracks is illegal, so Junger and his friends camped without tents and lived off the land as much as possible to avoid detection.

Throughout the journey, the four men had to dodge Amtrak police, mimicking the danger of combat foot patrols.

“We were sleeping under bridges, in abandoned buildings and in the woods, and we were bathing in rivers and cooking on little twig fires in the woods, and actively evading the police,” Junger said. “The more dangerous something is, the harder something is, the closer people are driven together. That makes combat an ideal sort of environment to create close bonds.”

When soldiers return home from war, Junger said it’s more than the adrenaline rush of battle that they miss, it’s also the “powerful bonds of brotherhood.”

“They come back to this fragmented, alienated, wide-open industrial society where people are living by themselves, in little apartments or one-family dwellings, and frankly I think they're just lonely,” he said.

In the “The Last Patrol,” Junger tackles the issue most civilians don’t understand -- the complications of PTSD. All four men are troubled by PTSD and at one point in the film, the emotional scars of combat bubbled up when they saw a stray dog get hit by a car.

“It really triggered a reaction in Brendan… he just started running, and I sort of chased after him,” Junger said. “Then Dave asked this kind of profound question. He said, ‘OK, if you're really upset that the dog got killed does that mean you have PTSD? Or if it didn't bother you at all, does that mean you have PTSD? Which is it?’”

“The trick to a healthy life and reintegrating into society after war is to get there in the middle somewhere,” Junger added.

Junger first met Brendan O’Byrne as a highly competent soldier in “Restrepo.” Later, he was featured in Junger’s 2010 book aptly titled, “War.” O’Byrne admits to struggling with alcoholism throughout the yearlong production of “The Last Patrol,” but after their 300-mile journey, Junger says O’Byrne has been sober for nearly a year.

“Soldiers come back from a very unified experience where no one cares if you're gay or straight, or Republican or Democrat, or Harvard educated or your dad's in prison. No one cares, right?” Junger said. “And then you come back to America where we're completely politically divided and economically and racially divided society, and I think it's appalling to soldiers who encounter that back home when it didn't exist in the front lines.”

Junger first gained fame for his best-selling book, “The Perfect Storm,” which was later made into a blockbuster film starring George Clooney. Junger said he has long been fascinated by what it mean to “be a man” and tests of masculine endurance.

“Every society in the world uses groups of young males to do things that are miserable and dangerous. That's what young men are utilized for,” he said. “Drilling for oil, logging, commercial fishing, war, whatever it is. Society just sends young men out to get it done.”

Considering the high rates of suicide, depression and substance abuse among veterans, Junger says helping them transition is a debt we owe them.

“Soldiers are coming back from your war, not their war, from your war,” he said. “It's all of our concern to take this incredible resource we have as a nation in these capable, young people... if we can make society a more communal enterprise, more community oriented, integrated enterprise--not only will we save the vets, ultimately we're going to save ourselves.”

For the men of “The Last Patrol,” the journey is a way to finally move on. Guillermo Cervera returned to the front lines to cover the conflict in Ukraine, but Junger says he is truly done with covering wars, making his “Last Patrol” a search for purpose and meaning in life outside the combat zones.

“I think what it did do was allow me to construct something good out of something bad,” he said.

The HBO documentary film, "The Last Patrol," debuts Nov. 10 on HBO.