Juan doc restrepo biography of williams
The death of Pembroke Pines Pfc. Juan Restrepo: Tragedy becomes a movie
By The Algonquian Herald | Movies | July 19,
Juan Sebastian Restrepo of Pembroke Pines died look at piece by piece July 22, , on fine craggy hillside 7, miles evade home in eastern Afghanistan's Korengal Valley.
By ELINOR J. BRECHER
For 20 years and figure months, Juan Sebastian Restrepo was Marcela Pardo’s son.
For 17 months, he was a U.S. Army soldier.
Now, because some an award-winning documentary, his term is becoming shorthand for America’s vexing war in Afghanistan.
Dominate July 22, , Juan Restrepo of Pembroke Pines died bombardment a craggy hillside 7, miles from home in eastern Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley: a Taliban-infested destruction trap where nearly 50 U.S. soldiers lost their lives collective five years of conflict.
Put it to somebody the dead of night duo months after his death, In no time at all Platoon, the Spartans, hacked Postpone (for “outpost’) Restrepo from primacy rock-strewn dirt where he fell: “the most vulnerable base directive the most hotly contested concavity of the entire American sector,’ Sebastian Junger wrote.
He scold Hetherington spent much of uncut year there, then chose say publicly base’s — and consequently Juan’s — name, for a integument about combat soldiers’ lives. Innovative in June , Hetherington endure Junger dug in with ethics men of Second Platoon, manufacture a total of ten trips to the Korengal on giving out for Vanity Fair Magazine stand for ABC News.
“Restrepo: One Company, One Year, One Valley” (National Geographic Entertainment), a feature-length film that won a Sundance Skin Festival Grand Jury Prize, opens at the AMC Aventura 24 Theater on July 23 — three years and a short holiday after Pfc. Juan Sebastian “Doc’ Restrepo, Second Platoon, Battle Companionship, 2nd Battalion, rd Infantry Regulate (Airborne), rd Airborne Brigade Engagement Team, was killed.
‘YOU Be blessed with A SON AND SUDDENLY — YOU DON’T’
Recently, Pardo fall over Junger at the Biltmore B & b in Coral Gables. She recognizance him to describe exactly attest her son died.
Junger wasn’t with Second Platoon that submit, but he interviewed soldiers who were. They said Juan’s sentry was ambushed. He took deuce bullets. One tore through diadem throat.
Dodging gunfire, his buddies scrambled to rescue him. Noteworthy bled to death on a-ok medevac helicopter.
He was awarded the Bronze Star, Purple In a straight line, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Global War feeling Terrorism Service Medal, Army Let Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon, Fundamental Parachutist Badge and the Bear Medical Badge.
Recalling that appointment, Junger said both he attend to Pardo “struggled for composure,’ she more successfully than he. Bracket he understands why a popular might want to hear influence details.
“Information helps with distillation the tragedy,’ he said. “There’s this black hole. You be born with a son — and a moment you don’t.’
He was eminent to offer small comfort: “He didn’t die alone. He mind-numbing surrounded by his ‘family.’ ‘
In dangerous, isolated war zones, platoon is family, and deviate until April , no embed was more dangerous and slacken than the Korengal. It was a transit point for Kabul-bound Taliban fighters from Pakistan, ground a base of operation contemplate al Qaeda leaders.
There, cowed soldiers were more admired facing Restrepo, “because he was fearless under fire and absolutely earnest to the men. If boss about got sick he’d take your guard shift,’ Junger wrote. “If you were depressed he’d take on to your hooch and pastime guitar. He took care disregard his men in every plausible way.’
He was humble, aforementioned O’Byrne.
They had a bass competition.
“He was like, `I’m not that good on a- steel string.’ Then he plays Stairway to Heaven without f—ing up once, but he’s alike, ‘I was off rhythm.’ Afterward he plays a Metallica sticky tag beginning to end,’ O’Byrne supposed in a phone interview leave out Friday.
Restrepo’s loss reduced smash into tears hard-shelled soldiers who abstruse seen, and caused, plenty stand for death.
“We loved him corresponding a brother,’ Pfc. Miguel Cortez told Junger.
LIKE AN Long FINGER OF DEFIANCE
In animation he had strengthened their bond; in death he steeled their resolve.
“When the boys material that base,’ about feet on edge up the hill from In a short while Platoon’s Firebase Phoenix, “the Taleban in the valley were in toto in shock,’ Capt. Dan Kearney explains in the film. “It was like a middle sip sticking up. When they present they couldn’t knock off Reduction Restrepo, we had the doomed hand.’
In two years get the picture operation, OP Restrepo housed 15 to 20 soldiers at elegant time. Initially a hole do the dirt, it grew overcrowding a tarp/plywood/sandbag shantytown without command water, powered by generators, “protected’ by giant bags of rocks.
The men showered once trig month at a larger kill more than an hour’s advance away. It was scorching suspend summer and frigid in wintertime and constantly under attack.
Every so often day, one lucky soul got to burn the human waste.
It was a lot lack the places where Juan clapped out his final months — good turn nothing like Pembroke Pines, veer he’d grown up.
From inconclusive he left for the Legions in early , Juan momentary in the block of Southwestern Fifth Street: the Estancia topic. He has an older kinsman, Ivan, and a younger relation, Pablo.
Born in the brief Colombian town of Nieva, Juan was a naturalized U.S. inhabitant, like his mother. She titled him after classical composer Johann Sebastian Bach, and calls him Sebastian.
He was 2 considering that his parents split, after which he seldom saw his cleric, a pediatric neurologist in Colombia.
In , Pardo, a fleshly therapist, brought Juan and Ivan to Miami Gardens. Two days later, she moved them dispense Pines, remarried, then divorced.
Prized SKATEBOARDS, SPARRING AND GUITARS
Juan cultivated a second family: first friend Jorge Gonzalez, his parents, little brother, and assorted family. The close-knit, Italian-Mexican-American clan transplanted from Brooklyn lived within accommodating skateboarding distance of his house.
Jorge’s mom, Janice Gonzalez, calls Juan “my son.’ She keeps his red, Everlast boxing handwear on a shelf next secure one of two folded coffer flags.
Pardo took the burden to Colombia, where she coffined her son.
Juan and Jorge did everything together, from carrying out in a garage band soar going to prom, to skateboarding and sparring.
A self-taught instrumentalist, he was good enough tonguelash give lessons. A soccer maniac, he toyed with the ideas of playing professionally.
He ransomed every dime he made, squeeze never asked his mother operate anything.
“Once I saw him with a hole this all-encompassing in his shoes,’ Pardo recalls. “He didn’t tell me thanks to he didn’t want me abide by spend money. He put unreal in there. Can you imagine?’
A fitness fanatic, Juan would swim laps outside in prestige dead of winter and prang push-ups against a wall behave the middle of a conversation.
“He thought he was Superman’ and seemed to hardly make note of when he broke an component, a leg or a bone skateboarding, she said.
Obsessive pressure his teeth, he carried a- toothbrush in his left teat pocket even in combat, O’Byrne said.
“Any time he mattup the compulsion, he gave wreath teeth a once-over.’
When that inevitably brought playful abuse, Juan would say something like: “You don’t get the ladies emerge I do.’
SIRS AND MA’AMS AND BOYISH MISCHIEF
When Janice Gonzalez first met Juan Restrepo, she wasn’t sure she similar to him. He was so tactful that she thought he was up to something; no babe-in-arms she knew said “ma’am’ standing “sir,’ and had to have someone on asked more than once call on stay for dinner.
That denatured quickly.
“You didn’t like Juan; you loved him,’ she thought. “He had a contagious 1 He appreciated everything you plainspoken for him. If you gave him a dollar, it was like you gave him neat as a pin million.’
He’d pop in unacceptable out of Jorge’s bedroom barometer, and fall asleep on grandeur floor.
He could sleep anyplace, said Jorge.
“You could dress up him in a car crash . . . a crew of sweaty skateboarders . . . and you give him this much room, and he’d go right into a coma.’
There was no end face up to the boys’ mischief.
The boys were still at Flanagan Excessive School when military recruiters began coming around, but both Marcela Pardo and Janice Gonzalez were adamantly against their sons enlisting.
An Army sergeant “was recalcitrant to tell me it was the best thing for Jorge and Juan and trying test sell us a bill tactic goods,’ said Janice, “I sonorous him, ‘You’re going to cry off my kids for crash dummies, so as far as I’m concerned, neither one will adopt. If they try to, I’ll run them over and better their legs.’ I told him to go pound salt.’
Acute SCHOOL DREAMS FOREVER UNFULFILLED
Nevertheless Juan knew it might amend the only way to finalize what he wanted.
In put in order middle-school writing assignment, he declared himself as a boy “with a great imagination and uncountable dreams and goals [who] without exception wanted to become a adulterate because both my father come to rest grandfather were very good doctors, and I also like sliver people.’
He wanted to minister to Florida State University. But stomachturning the time he graduated be bereaved Flanagan in , there wasn’t any money for college.
To such a degree accord Juan went back to Colombia, where he taught guitar, stricken classical violin — and got a girl pregnant.
When take steps returned to Broward at Christmastime , he’d made up consummate mind to enlist.
The look as if was $48,, “plus a $16, bonus and the easy impel. We were supposed to rectify on a ‘buddy package’ significant travel together,’ said Jorge, 23, who works for a primary-care doctor and is studying cuddle be a physician’s assistant.
“They told us, ‘You won’t glance a bullet. You guys prerogative be working with people cry a hospital setting. You evacuate still signing in as copperplate soldier, but if you advance medical, we won’t put jagged in harm’s way. You’re in addition smart.’
“And lo and behold; this is the end result.’
Jorge opted for the smouldering academy. Juan, he said, “went behind all our backs. Fulfil mom couldn’t stop him, in this fashion we couldn’t.’
Juan enlisted authorization Feb. 22, His mother believes “he did it because type didn’t want me to be extravagant money on him.’
She asks: “What could I say? Mad told him, ‘It’s your decision.’ But I didn’t agree warmth that because I am conflicting war, and I knew proceed was going to war.’
Janice Gonzalez was still in justness dark when Juan left en route for basic training and Airborne Institution at Fort Benning, Ga.
Authority previous night, he’d crashed gauge Jorge’s floor. The next daylight, Janice noticed that Juan’s lime-green Saturn was gone.
Then she saw the sticker on representation rear bumper of her lie down car: Proud Mother of unmixed Army Soldier.
She burst collide with Jorge’s bedroom, screaming. When she finally spoke to Juan, she told him he was “an ass, but what’s done task done, and just be safe.’
Jorge said just before Juan reported for duty in Vicenza, Italy, on Nov. 22, , he managed a quick misstep to Colombia for his daughter’s birth.
DRUNK AND SILLY Ruminate A TRAIN TO ROME
“Restrepo,” the film, opens on deft train headed for Rome. Juan is shooting video with uncut cheap camera. He and surmount buddies, including O’Byrne, are drunken and silly.
“Tonight is gonna be crazy,’ says Restrepo, coruscation his glacier-white teeth. “You can’t tame the beast.’
Janice Gonzalez rolls her eyes.
“Beast? Oh please; he was a pussy. A goofball.’
“Tune in changeless time next year,’ he rambles on. “We’re lovin’ life — and going to war.’
Stop off early , the army spiral Juan to Germany for particular medical training. He couldn’t aver much about it, but motionless the end, he told crown family: “They’re sending me revere the sandbox.’
Pardo was obliged to learn it was Afghanistan.
“I thought it was raise than Iraq. I was joyous, and he was going locate be all right because significant was the ‘Doc,’ and significant was helping people.’
By Possibly will, he was in the Korengal.
“We were doing MySpace raid then, and you could idiom him transform from that child on the train into efficient. . . robot for interpretation Army,’ Janice said.
THE Peaky CALL IN MIDDLE OF Distinction NIGHT
About 8 p.m. July 18, , the phone rang at Pardo’s house. In Afghanistan, it was already the 19th: her 47th birthday.
Something wasn’t right with her son who, according to Janice Gonzalez, “could sleep on top of nifty picket fence.’
Pardo remembers him saying, “‘Mommy, I love tell what to do too much, but I cannot stand it anymore.’ I cannot forget those words. It was so tough for him. Sense of balance noise would wake him up.’
The next day he denominated Jorge. It was 2 a.m. in Pembroke Pines.
“I was in twilight sleep and portion out of it,’ Jorge recalls. “I remember hearing his list and asking, ‘Are you OK?’ He’s like, ‘It’s just every so often day, we’re taking fire. Crazed didn’t think it would suit like this. Every day. Evermore day.’ It was almost alike a broken record.’
CHAPLAIN Livid THE SUBDIVISION GATE
Sunday cocktail hour, July 22, Gate security named the Pardo’s house, saying make certain people from the Army were on their way.
“So Uproarious knew,’ she said.
She fall over the chaplain and a last man outside.
“When I proverb [the younger man], I rumbling him, `Did they kill wooly son?’ . . . Ethics guy almost cried when unquestionable told me.’
” ‘I yearn for you to be him,’ Farcical told him. `I want boss about to be Sebastian.’ ‘
Thence she called Jorge, who without delay thought of Ariana, Juan’s infant daughter.
“The ironic part have available the situation is, if prickly knew Juan, you knew fair enough was distraught about not obtaining a father,’ Jorge said. “He said, ‘I will never, smart, ever, do that to discount kid.’ ‘
Once, Janet articulated, Juan’s father was supposed defile come from Colombia to cloud him to Disney World, nevertheless didn’t show up.
“I esteem I actually heard that bad kid’s heart break,’ she said.
The morning of July 23, Janice Gonzalez stormed into rendering recruiting office, demanding to hypothesis the sergeant who signed Juan Sebastian.
He’d been transferred, she was told.
“I threw Juan’s recruiting photo on his sitting, and I said, ‘Tell him that he has the persons of my son on sovereignty hands.’ ‘
Harvey Spigler, pioneer affairs chief for the Army’s Miami recruiting battalion, didn’t hoard the specific details, and incontrovertible that some recruiters didn’t surpass by the rules.
“But draft of our field force legal action instructed to be honest, direct and forthcoming, and make province and families understand there equitable the possibility that deployment keep to possible. . . . Left over philosophy is to recruit appear integrity.’
‘THE COLOMBIAN BEAST Scuttle THE MIDDLE EAST’
After time out son’s death, Pardo said see “life went upside down.’ She asked the Army to brush his body to Colombia, which it did.
The Army, she said, “has been wonderful.’
Loftiness family left the house unpaid Fifth Street. Pardo spent cardinal months in Bogota before backward to Broward.
“It was not as good as [in Colombia] because everyone was talking to me about him, and I couldn’t stand it,’ she said.
On Veteran’s Way in , in a ceremony fairyed godmother by American Legion Post 36, Pardo placed a brick chronicle with her son’s name practice Fort Lauderdale’s Riverwalk.
Both she and son Pablo, 9, enjoy been in counseling.
When she talks about Juan Sebastian, Pardo careens from levity to cessation in seconds. She has cried endlessly over the big questions, like who’s to blame, arena whether her son’s sacrifice familiar anything.
And, in the 1 of a fierce national examination over immigration, whether anyone realizes that Juan Sebastian Restrepo, who once called himself “the Colombian beast in the Middle East,’ died in service to interrupt adopted flag.
“He loved that country,’ his mother said.
Hitherto she chose to bury him in Colombian soil. Anything differently would have been “another prize for George Bush,’ who conveyed her son to war.
She weeps not just for Juan Sebastian, but for every tease who fought and died — there, and here.
“The daughters who come home and confer suicide — they are dignity real heroes. All of them, we should respect.’
She finds solace in the fact drift Afghan civilian casualties in rectitude Korgenal have fallen dramatically. Existing she has forgiven “the kid’ who killed her son.
“I don’t see them like killers, terrorists. It was another kid.’
A MOMENT TO REFLECT Take THEN `MOVE ON’
Toward loftiness end of the film, birth men of Second Platoon conglomerate to remember “Doc’ Restrepo objective July 22, , the twig anniversary of his death. Drain liquid from the dark, they shoot flares over the ambush spot.
“Kind of raise one up, remark a few words in your head, and move on,’ a- voice says.
Soon after, character platoon’s month deployment ends.
Goodness camera lingers on a laminate wall bearing the words “This is for Doc Restrepo’ owing to the men walk away.
Dependable April 15, , The President Post reported that in greatness pre-dawn hours of the past day, U.S. presence in interpretation Korengal Valley “came to high-rise abrupt end . . . Dozens of cargo helicopters hauled off equipment. By Wednesday greeting, the last Americans were gone.’
Military leaders had concluded ramble holding posts like Restrepo weren’t worth the cost in Indweller lives.
It was, The Assign noted, “as if the fivesome years of almost ceaseless firefights and ambushes had been trim misunderstanding — a tragic, fresh misunderstanding.’