It was Larry Rougle's sixth combat tour of duty, and he feared it might be his last.

When Rougle came home to visit his family in Utah, a few weeks before deploying to Afghanistan's deadly Korengal Valley, he pulled his mother aside to confide in her.

"He told me that he didn't think that he would be making it home this time," Nancy Rougle recalled. "I said, 'No, no, let's not talk about it.' I didn't want to believe it."

Nearly three years after her son's death, there's still a part of her that doesn't believe he's gone. And that's why she can't bring herself to watch the documentary "Restrepo," which opens Friday, Sept. 3, at Salt Lake City's Broadway Centre Cinemas.

Documentary filmmaker Tim Hetherington was there, moments after Rougle's death on Oct. 23, 2007, to capture images of the 25-year-old Army staff sergeant's fellow soldiers as they came upon his body. The scene is the centerpiece of a film about life, death and brotherhood. And even those who have no connection to the men on the screen will find it hard to watch.

In wrenching, unflinching detail, the photographer's camera closed in on Sgt. John Clinard as he learned, in the midst of a firefight, that his friend was dead.

Clinard sobbed, screamed and struggled against his fellow soldiers to get to Rougle's body. "Shut up," he cried. "Shut the f—- up. You're lying, right?"

The platoon had lost comrades before: The film takes its name from "Doc" Juan Restrepo, a combat medic who was killed three months before Rougle. But Hetherington said Rougle's death was extremely demoralizing for the men with whom he served.

"He was one of the best soldiers in the company, so when he was killed, it just really shocked everybody," said Hetherington, who helped load Rougle's body onto a comrade's back, beginning a journey that ended with the fallen soldier's burial at Arlington National Cemetery. "It affected them deeply."

When the filmmakers caught up with Kevin Rice in Italy, three months after his deployment, the staff sergeant explained why Rougle's death was different from the others.

"If the best guy we have out here just got killed, where's that put me?" Rice remembered thinking. "What's going to happen to me? What's going to happen to the guys on my left and my right?"

When the film debuted in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury award in the U.S. documentary competition, Hetherington and his filmmaking partner, Sebastian Junger, arranged a private screening for Rougle's family.

On the drive from her home in Magna to Park City, the soldier's mother tried to steel herself for what she was about to see. But as the film built toward its emotional, heart-pounding pinnacle — a bullet-by-bullet account of the battle in which her son died — Nancy Rougle could no longer bear to watch.

"I ran out," she said. "The first part of the movie, I thought it was very good, very well done. But when it came to the part where my son died, I just couldn't go through with it."

After the screening, the filmmakers gave the Rougle family a copy of the documentary on DVD. Nancy Rougle said most of her relatives have seen the film now, and she's thought about watching it, too.

And so, as the film opens in Salt Lake City this weekend, Nancy Rougle won't be there. "If I was to watch it," she said, "it would be here, in my home."

But she's not sure when, or if, that day will come.

"Of course, I know that my son is dead," she said. "But as a mother there is part of you that just doesn't accept it. I'm afraid if I watch it, that part will go away. And I'm not ready for that yet."

Matthew LaPlante can be reached at mlaplante@sltrib.com. Read his blog at blogs.sltrib.com/military.