The Conscience Voice of "Restrepo" Volunteers to Return to Afghanistan

SGT Pemble-Belkin

    Accidental Star of Indie documentary Film "Restrepo," current Army SGT Pemble-Belkin, volunteers to return to combat.  According to an article by Martin Kuz, In Stars and Stripes Newspaper.   Sgt. Pemble-Belkin has volunteered to leave a state-side role as a trainer at Ft. Polk, LA.  “I got tired of seeing units come through and then deploying. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything anymore,” he said. “I’d rather be back here, where the fight is, instead of sitting back there."  Today SGT Pemble-Belkin is stationed just a few miles from the Pech River Valley, where he was in 2008, assigned to small combat outpost name Restrepo.  Named in honor of their KIA platoon medic PFC Juan Restrepo.   
 
 


     The documentary, "Restrepo," has been nominated for 8 awards, to include an Oscar, and 4 wins including Sundance Film Festival.  This movie should be required viewing for all Americans.  The language is raw, but so is much of the video footage.  A platoon of soldiers fight to maintain their outpost against the Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan.  This film takes you to their world, to what they are really thinking, and feeling......  As this group of hero's endure some of the fiercest fighting of the war.  
   


    Tim Hetherington, was the photographer, filmmaker, co-producer and co-director of "Restrepo," with author Sebastian Junger.  Tim was killed in Misrata, Libya on April 20, 2011, while covering the Libya conflict.   If there is any great lesson to be taken from Tim Hetherington’s death, it is this: war is terrible. I am somewhat of a realist, and I acknowledge that it is sometimes necessary," says  Richard Allen Smith, editor of VetVoice, in his article A valiant and fearless truth-teller:  Tim Hetherington.   The last project he completed before his death is his book Infidel.  The title Infidel is taken from the tattoo the men adopted as a badge of their comradeship. Warm, moving and full of humor, this book is a tribute to the "rough men ready to do violence on our behalf" and a provocative contribution to the documentation of war in our time. says the books description.