Soldier’s Story: A Videoblog from Afghanistan
For war enthusiasts and people that are interested in the war in Afghanistan, this might be the videoblog for you. This videoblog, in the Telegraph newspaper website, contains videos from the scenes of the war in Afghanistan from the viewpoint of the British soldiers. This is the description of the videoblog from the
Telegraph website:
“In a ground-breaking departure for newspapers, The Sunday Telegraph has “embedded” a video camera with a front-line infantry regiment in southern Afghanistan.
Readers are given a soldier’s eye view of life in Helmand, where 8,000 British troops are locked in an increasingly bitter conflict against the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces.
In this week’s report, Corporal Billy Carnegie’s unit are ambushed by the Taliban as they provide cover during an operation to recover a US bomb south of the town of Musa Qala in northern Helmand.
US marines engage the Taliban with a anti-tank rocket and British Army Apache attack helicopters attack Taliban fighters – but Billy’s video camera fails just as the Apache attacks the enemy.
The Sunday Telegraph is receiving regular video dispatches from Cpl Carnegie, the commander of 1 section, 10 Platoon, D Company, the 5th battalion of The Royal Regiment of Scotland (5 Scots), which will appear on the Telegraph website on a regular basis.
His dispatches record how soldiers fight and survive in the austere environment of the Helmand Desert, where temperatures soar to 50C in the summer.
The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders are a tight knit family unit, which recruits largely from the highlands of Scotland and the Glasgow area. They form part of 16 Air Assault and are of the Army’s oldest units.
The regiment’s history goes back to the early 1800s and they were the original “Thin Red Line”, which repelled Russian attacks at Balaclava in 1854. When not wearing helmets they are distinguished by their Tam O’Shanter caps named after the character in the Robert Burn’s poem”
I found this videoblog quite interesting, because we can watch the activities of the soldiers in Afghanistan. By this we can see how it feels to be a soldier and the conditions of the war, from the viewpoints of the soldiers themselves, not from news programs. Moreover, it can give us education regarding the procedures that are there in the wars. However, the viewing window for the videos is quite small, and there are no subtitles available (some people may find it hard to understand English accents). Nevertheless, this is a very interesting vlog for all of us.
