Brendan O'Byrne - 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, Restrepo. Peaceful Warrior.

The Jerry Hyde Podcast

O’Byrne is standing at the corner of Ninth Avenue and 36th Street with a to-go cup in each hand and the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up. It’s six in the morning and very cold. He’s put on twenty pounds since I last saw him and could be a laborer waiting for the gate to open at the construction site across the street. Now that he’s out of the Army I’m supposed to call him Brendan, but I’m finding that almost impossible to do. We shake hands and he gives me one of the coffees and we go to get my car. The gash across his forehead is mostly healed, though I can still see where the stitches were. One of his front teeth is chipped and looks like a fang. He had a rough time when he got back to Italy; in some ways he was in more danger there than in combat. O’Byrne had been with Battle Company in the Korengal Valley, a small but extraordinarily violent slit in the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains of eastern Afghanistan. He was just one soldier out of thirty but seemed to have a knack for putting words to the things that no one else really wanted to talk about.
War - Sebastian Junger
Like all of Sebastian Junger's work, he has a way of painting a picture of where we're going with simple, efficient eloquence, and never more so than this opening paragraph in his book War.
I myself first met Brendan in New York City. He had driven more than 10 hours from his home in North Carolina to meet with me and attend the premier of a film I had made with Mai Hua about my men's work. That's the kind of thing Brendan will do for a stranger.
With the boundless energy of a giant puppy, Brendan O'Byrne is full of nervous excitement, warmth, enthusiasm, laughter and love, behind which is a huge well of often painful life experience that gives him a profound wisdom and generosity of spirit.
Featured in the Oscar nominated film Restrepo and its follow up Korengal, Brendan served 15 months in Afghanistan, and here he takes time to talk with me about his childhood, multi generational trauma, prison, addiction, PTSD and his time in the military. He's an exceptional, raw, brave, sensitive and wounded man who I believe has so much to offer the world and I've wanted to share his indomitable spirit with you since this podcast's conception.
Title track composed by Jerry Hyde and Nick Van Gelder, produced by Nick Van Gelder, keyboards by Kenny Dickenson, brass by Noel Langley, vocals by Sian O'Gorman.
Audio Engineering by Sam Williams at Right Royal Audio