Category Archives: Veterans Affairs

Sebastian Junger: Tim Hetherington Didn't Have to Die

Sebastian Junger: Tim Hetherington Didn’t Have to Die

U.S. Naval Institute’s Fred Schultz spoke with journalist and documentary filmmaker Sebastian Junger on Sept. 24 about Junger’s new organization dedicated to providing basic medical training to freelance frontline war reporters and photographers.

Junger created Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues following the 2011 death of photographer Tim Hetherington in Libya.
Hetherington was wounded by mortar fire while covering the conflict in Libya and died on the way to a local hospital. Junger said if fellow journalists on the scene were trained in basic first aid, Hetherington could have survived.

RISC has conducted its first intensive training session in April and his preparing for a second in New York.

Junger also discussed his view on the U.S. Afghanistan pullout and his responsibility for helping make the term “The Perfect Storm,” one of the most overused clichés in the last twenty years.

Remembering Ernest Borgnine

Remembering Ernest Borgnine

Ernest-Borgnine_2004On Sunday, Ernest Borgnine died at 95.
Best known for his screen roles in films like Marty, From Here to Eternity and television shows McHale’s Navy and Airwolf, Borgnine also spent ten years in the U.S. Navy retiring as a Gunner’s Mate First-Class. Borgnine was a lifetime member of the U.S. Naval Institute.

Borgnine’s Navy

By Ernest Borgnine
Proceedings April 2009

It was just like in the movies.

The year was 1935, and I was right out of high school, restless, and bored with my temporary job working on a vegetable truck. One day, on a delivery run through New Haven, Connecticut, I spotted a sign on a storefront that said “JOIN THE NAVY—SEE THE WORLD.” Hey, I thought, I ought to look into that. So I stopped in to see the recruiter. Two days later, I was on a bus to the U.S. Naval Training Station in Newport, Rhode Island. more