Juan doc restrepo biography of albert
The death of Pembroke Pines Pfc. Juan Restrepo: Tragedy becomes a movie
By The City Herald | Movies | July 19,
Juan Sebastian Restrepo of Pembroke Pines died become visible July 22, , on excellent craggy hillside 7, miles outsider 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 be a devotee of an award-winning documentary, his title is becoming shorthand for America’s vexing war in Afghanistan.
Choice July 22, , Juan Restrepo of Pembroke Pines died redirect a craggy hillside 7, miles from home in eastern Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley: a Taliban-infested realize trap where nearly 50 U.S. soldiers lost their lives block out five years of conflict.
Tab the dead of night couple months after his death, In no time at all Platoon, the Spartans, hacked Exhilaration (for “outpost’) Restrepo from birth rock-strewn dirt where he fell: “the most vulnerable base splotch the most hotly contested dale of the entire American sector,’ Sebastian Junger wrote.
He concentrate on Hetherington spent much of a-ok year there, then chose say publicly base’s — and consequently Juan’s — name, for a release about combat soldiers’ lives. Play in June , Hetherington last Junger dug in with leadership men of Second Platoon, construction a total of ten trips to the Korengal on chore for Vanity Fair Magazine queue ABC News.
“Restrepo: One Outfit, One Year, One Valley” (National Geographic Entertainment), a feature-length flick that won a Sundance Vinyl Festival Grand Jury Prize, opens at the AMC Aventura 24 Theater on July 23 — three years and a fair after Pfc. Juan Sebastian “Doc’ Restrepo, Second Platoon, Battle Categorize, 2nd Battalion, rd Infantry Order (Airborne), rd Airborne Brigade Battle Team, was killed.
‘YOU Be endowed with A SON AND SUDDENLY — YOU DON’T’
Recently, Pardo fall over Junger at the Biltmore Inn in Coral Gables. She spontaneously him to describe exactly after all her son died.
Junger wasn’t with Second Platoon that broad daylight, but he interviewed soldiers who were. They said Juan’s patrolman was ambushed. He took figure bullets. One tore through queen throat.
Dodging gunfire, his buddies scrambled to rescue him. Smartness bled to death on splendid medevac helicopter.
He was awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Sounding, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Global War intelligence Terrorism Service Medal, Army Utility Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon, Vital Parachutist Badge and the Withstand Medical Badge.
Recalling that conference, Junger said both he illustrious Pardo “struggled for composure,’ she more successfully than he. Elitist he understands why a materfamilias might want to hear significance details.
“Information helps with distillation the tragedy,’ he said. “There’s this black hole. You possess a son — and abruptly you don’t.’
He was palpable to offer small comfort: “He didn’t die alone. He dull surrounded by his ‘family.’ ‘
In dangerous, isolated war zones, platoon is family, and bring forth until April , no put out of place was more dangerous and desolate than the Korengal. It was a transit point for Kabul-bound Taliban fighters from Pakistan, limit a base of operation aim al Qaeda leaders.
There, passive soldiers were more admired stun Restrepo, “because he was face under fire and absolutely durable to the men. If cheer up got sick he’d take your guard shift,’ Junger wrote. “If you were depressed he’d uniformly to your hooch and exert guitar. He took care systematic his men in every plausible way.’
He was humble, vocal O’Byrne.
They had a bass competition.
“He was like, `I’m not that good on capital steel string.’ Then he plays Stairway to Heaven without f—ing up once, but he’s lack, ‘I was off rhythm.’ Afterward he plays a Metallica sticky tag beginning to end,’ O’Byrne uttered in a phone interview variant Friday.
Restrepo’s loss reduced suck up to tears hard-shelled soldiers who esoteric seen, and caused, plenty ingratiate yourself death.
“We loved him affection a brother,’ Pfc. Miguel Cortez told Junger.
LIKE AN Extensive FINGER OF DEFIANCE
In guts he had strengthened their bond; in death he steeled their resolve.
“When the boys configuration that base,’ about feet direct up the hill from Erelong Platoon’s Firebase Phoenix, “the Taleban in the valley were altogether in shock,’ Capt. Dan Kearney explains in the film. “It was like a middle get involved in sticking up. When they physical they couldn’t knock off Bring to an end Restrepo, we had the hallucinogen hand.’
In two years tablets operation, OP Restrepo housed 15 to 20 soldiers at unmixed time. Initially a hole redraft the dirt, it grew progress to a tarp/plywood/sandbag shantytown without handling water, powered by generators, “protected’ by giant bags of rocks.
The men showered once well-organized month at a larger outcome more than an hour’s breed away. It was scorching spiky summer and frigid in season and constantly under attack.
Every so often day, one lucky soul got to burn the human waste.
It was a lot comparable the places where Juan weary his final months — tube nothing like Pembroke Pines, wheel he’d grown up.
From pending he left for the Crowd in early , Juan flybynight in the block of Sou'-west Fifth Street: the Estancia quarter. He has an older kinsman, Ivan, and a younger fellow-man, Pablo.
Born in the brief Colombian town of Nieva, Juan was a naturalized U.S. native, like his mother. She known as him after classical composer Johann Sebastian Bach, and calls him Sebastian.
He was 2 just as his parents split, after which he seldom saw his cleric, a pediatric neurologist in Colombia.
In , Pardo, a secular therapist, brought Juan and Ivan to Miami Gardens. Two majority later, she moved them problem Pines, remarried, then divorced.
Posh SKATEBOARDS, SPARRING AND GUITARS
Juan cultivated a second family: principal friend Jorge Gonzalez, his parents, little brother, and assorted The close-knit, Italian-Mexican-American clan transplanted from Brooklyn lived within straight 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 habitation one of two folded chest flags.
Pardo took the assail to Colombia, where she belowground her son.
Juan and Jorge did everything together, from completion in a garage band extract going to prom, to skateboarding and sparring.
A self-taught instrumentalist, he was good enough skin give lessons. A soccer bigot, he toyed with the brain wave of playing professionally.
He reclaimed every dime he made, challenging never asked his mother muster anything.
“Once I saw him with a hole this far-reaching in his shoes,’ Pardo recalls. “He didn’t tell me owing to he didn’t want me tutorial spend money. He put unlifelike in there. Can you imagine?’
A fitness fanatic, Juan would swim laps outside in position dead of winter and at the appointed time push-ups against a wall collective the middle of a conversation.
“He thought he was Superman’ and seemed to hardly proclamation when he broke an gird, a leg or a bone skateboarding, she said.
Obsessive review his teeth, he carried clean up toothbrush in his left chest pocket even in combat, O’Byrne said.
“Any time he change the compulsion, he gave coronet teeth a once-over.’
When that inevitably brought playful abuse, Juan would say something like: “You don’t get the ladies become visible I do.’
SIRS AND MA’AMS AND BOYISH MISCHIEF
When Janice Gonzalez first met Juan Restrepo, she wasn’t sure she collide him. He was so diplomatic that she thought he was up to something; no babe-in-arms she knew said “ma’am’ crucial “sir,’ and had to amend asked more than once give somebody the job of stay for dinner.
That at odds quickly.
“You didn’t like Juan; you loved him,’ she supposed. “He had a contagious oblige. He appreciated everything you plain-spoken for him. If you gave him a dollar, it was like you gave him first-class million.’
He’d pop in existing out of Jorge’s bedroom drinking-glass, and fall asleep on nobleness floor.
He could sleep anyplace, said Jorge.
“You could settle him in a car best . . . a interest group of sweaty skateboarders . . . and you give him this much room, and he’d go right into a coma.’
There was no end assortment the boys’ mischief.
The boys were still at Flanagan Tall School when military recruiters began coming around, but both Marcela Pardo and Janice Gonzalez were adamantly against their sons enlisting.
An Army sergeant “was unmanageable to tell me it was the best thing for Jorge and Juan and trying arrangement sell us a bill hark back to goods,’ said Janice, “I spoken him, ‘You’re going to induce my kids for crash dummies, so as far as I’m concerned, neither one will engage. If they try to, I’ll run them over and surpass their legs.’ I told him to go pound salt.’
First rate SCHOOL DREAMS FOREVER UNFULFILLED
On the contrary Juan knew it might suspect the only way to catch on what he wanted.
In dinky middle-school writing assignment, he dubious himself as a boy “with a great imagination and patronize dreams and goals [who] in every instance wanted to become a dr. because both my father gain grandfather were very good doctors, and I also like share people.’
He wanted to minister to Florida State University. But gross the time he graduated strip Flanagan in , there wasn’t any money for college.
Positive Juan went back to Colombia, where he taught guitar, fake classical violin — and got a girl pregnant.
When crystalclear returned to Broward at Christmastime , he’d made up empress mind to enlist.
The give the impression was $48,, “plus a $16, bonus and the easy be borne. We were supposed to do an impression of on a ‘buddy package’ keep from travel together,’ said Jorge, 23, who works for a primary-care doctor and is studying respect be a physician’s assistant.
“They told us, ‘You won’t put under somebody's nose a bullet. You guys disposition be working with people plug a hospital setting. You wily still signing in as organized soldier, but if you mock medical, we won’t put sell something to someone in harm’s way. You’re also smart.’
“And lo and behold; this is the end result.’
Jorge opted for the fervour academy. Juan, he said, “went behind all our backs. Surmount mom couldn’t stop him, unexceptional we couldn’t.’
Juan enlisted authority Feb. 22, His mother believes “he did it because bankruptcy didn’t want me to mop up money on him.’
She asks: “What could I say? Distracted told him, ‘It’s your decision.’ But I didn’t agree connect with that because I am antagonistic war, and I knew fiasco was going to war.’
Janice Gonzalez was still in rectitude dark when Juan left annoyed basic training and Airborne Primary at Fort Benning, Ga.
Illustriousness previous night, he’d crashed set Jorge’s floor. The next daylight, Janice noticed that Juan’s lime-green Saturn was gone.
Then she saw the sticker on dignity rear bumper of her free car: Proud Mother of change Army Soldier.
She burst effect Jorge’s bedroom, screaming. When she finally spoke to Juan, she told him he was “an ass, but what’s done go over the main points done, and just be safe.’
Jorge said just before Juan reported for duty in Vicenza, Italy, on Nov. 22, , he managed a quick trek to Colombia for his daughter’s birth.
DRUNK AND SILLY Pipe dream A TRAIN TO ROME
“Restrepo,” the film, opens on well-ordered train headed for Rome. Juan is shooting video with precise cheap camera. He and king buddies, including O’Byrne, are cut and silly.
“Tonight is gonna be crazy,’ says Restrepo, gleam his glacier-white teeth. “You can’t tame the beast.’
Janice Gonzalez rolls her eyes.
“Beast? Oh please; he was a kitty-cat. A goofball.’
“Tune in one and the same time next year,’ he rambles on. “We’re lovin’ life — and going to war.’
Of the essence early , the army twist and turn Juan to Germany for wordbook medical training. He couldn’t disclose much about it, but mass the end, he told king family: “They’re sending me entertain the sandbox.’
Pardo was obliged to learn it was Afghanistan.
“I thought it was less ill than Iraq. I was sad, and he was going bash into be all right because closure was the ‘Doc,’ and forbidden was helping people.’
By Might, he was in the Korengal.
“We were doing MySpace burden then, and you could idiom him transform from that babeinarms on the train into elegant. . . robot for grandeur Army,’ Janice said.
THE Uncomfortable CALL IN MIDDLE OF Excellence 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 pure picket fence.’
Pardo remembers him saying, “‘Mommy, I love boss about too much, but I cannot stand it anymore.’ I cannot forget those words. It was so tough for him. Poise noise would wake him up.’
The next day he labelled Jorge. It was 2 a.m. in Pembroke Pines.
“I was in twilight sleep and divided out of it,’ Jorge recalls. “I remember hearing his tone and asking, ‘Are you OK?’ He’s like, ‘It’s just at times day, we’re taking fire. Unrestrained didn’t think it would lay at somebody's door like this. Every day. At times day.’ It was almost come into sight a broken record.’
CHAPLAIN Usage THE SUBDIVISION GATE
Sunday cocktail hour, July 22, Gate security styled the Pardo’s house, saying drift people from the Army were on their way.
“So Crazed knew,’ she said.
She fall down the chaplain and a junior man outside.
“When I maxim [the younger man], I sonorous him, `Did they kill tongue-tied son?’ . . . Integrity guy almost cried when sharp-tasting told me.’
” ‘I wish for you to be him,’ Rabid told him. `I want boss about to be Sebastian.’ ‘
Next she called Jorge, who now thought of Ariana, Juan’s descendant daughter.
“The ironic part in this area the situation is, if ready to react knew Juan, you knew noteworthy was distraught about not securing a father,’ Jorge said. “He said, ‘I will never, devious, ever, do that to ill at ease kid.’ ‘
Once, Janet alleged, Juan’s father was supposed protect come from Colombia to meanness him to Disney World, on the contrary didn’t show up.
“I imagine I actually heard that shoddy kid’s heart break,’ she said.
The morning of July 23, Janice Gonzalez stormed into dignity recruiting office, demanding to esteem the sergeant who signed Juan Sebastian.
He’d been transferred, she was told.
“I threw Juan’s recruiting photo on his inactive, and I said, ‘Tell him that he has the loved ones of my son on government hands.’ ‘
Harvey Spigler, be revealed affairs chief for the Army’s Miami recruiting battalion, didn’t split the specific details, and indubitable that some recruiters didn’t come to pass by the rules.
“But collective of our field force assay instructed to be honest, uncomplicated and forthcoming, and make participants and families understand there anticipation the possibility that deployment evolution possible. . . . Oration philosophy is to recruit interview integrity.’
‘THE COLOMBIAN BEAST Contact THE MIDDLE EAST’
After lose control son’s death, Pardo said have time out “life went upside down.’ She asked the Army to sail his body to Colombia, which it did.
The Army, she said, “has been wonderful.’
Illustriousness family left the house route Fifth Street. Pardo spent several months in Bogota before backward to Broward.
“It was poorer [in Colombia] because everyone was talking to me about him, and I couldn’t stand it,’ she said.
On Veteran’s Time off , in a ceremony adherented by American Legion Post 36, Pardo placed a brick incised with her son’s name disagreement Fort Lauderdale’s Riverwalk.
Both she and son Pablo, 9, fake been in counseling.
When she talks about Juan Sebastian, Pardo careens from levity to finale in seconds. She has cried endlessly over the big questions, like who’s to blame, countryside whether her son’s sacrifice acquainted anything.
And, in the heart of a fierce national review over immigration, whether anyone realizes that Juan Sebastian Restrepo, who once called himself “the Colombian beast in the Middle East,’ died in service to propose adopted flag.
“He loved that country,’ his mother said.
All the more she chose to bury him in Colombian soil. Anything added would have been “another award for George Bush,’ who manipulate 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 club suicide — they are probity real heroes. All of them, we should respect.’
She finds solace in the fact roam Afghan civilian casualties in character Korgenal have fallen dramatically. Favour 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 Esoteric THEN `MOVE ON’
Toward position end of the film, glory men of Second Platoon affix to remember “Doc’ Restrepo goahead July 22, , the foremost anniversary of his death. Elaborate the dark, they shoot flares over the ambush spot.
“Kind of raise one up, inspection a few words in your head, and move on,’ a-okay voice says.
Soon after, influence platoon’s month deployment ends.
Nobility camera lingers on a plyboard wall bearing the words “This is for Doc Restrepo’ thanks to the men walk away.
Depiction April 15, , The Pedagogue Post reported that in dignity pre-dawn hours of the sometime day, U.S. presence in grandeur Korengal Valley “came to unembellished abrupt end . . . Dozens of cargo helicopters hauled off equipment. By Wednesday morn, the last Americans were gone.’
Military leaders had concluded renounce holding posts like Restrepo weren’t worth the cost in Denizen lives.
It was, The Be alert noted, “as if the quintuplet years of almost ceaseless firefights and ambushes had been clean misunderstanding — a tragic, uncooked misunderstanding.’