The age of context is upon us.
Last week we featured some POV footage of mind-blowing surfing action. It was fun, sporting and intentionally creative.
The clip above is on the the whole other side of the spectrum. It’s real, raw, and unnerving from the middle of an active battlefield. No doubt, it was not created with artistic purpose. But it captures the context and imagery of what it is like, visually, to be in war. Nerve-rattling and stressful.
Watch as this unknown US soldier places himself in harms way – presumably to to pull Taliban insurgent fire off his squad, pinned down above him, so they could get to safety. He is hit several times (reports suggest his body armor protected him from serious injury) and his exclamation, “Im hit, Im hit,” parks itself in your brain. The soldier’s actions might seem courageous and brave, but some are suggesting that he was reckless and moving into harms way without a plan for cover. I’m not a solider or an expert in fighting the Taliban, so I will leave that debate for others. I’m sure there will be no shortage of opinions.
The soldier is quoted:
“I got a hit a total of 4 times. My helmet cam died and i made it down the mountain on my own. I was also hit in the side of my helmet and my eye pro was shot off of my face.
A round struck the tube by my hand of the 203 grenade launcher which knocked it out of my hands. When I picked the rifle back up it was still functional but the grenade launcher tube had a nice sized 7.62 cal bullet hole in it and was rendered useless.”
This is an relatively new application of wearable cameras – and the footage from the battlefield is more ubiquitous than ever. There is ongoing footage from the war in Afghanistan HERE.
Video makes you wonder why he is what looks like out in the open. But I have learned that without all the informationb you can not pass judgment on actions like this. Scary as Hell.
how awful is war..i could feel the terror of imminent death for that young soldier .Damn it.
Can we mind our own damn business already and just LEAVE????
if you remove all the atrocities , killing and destruction caused by war, and add a scorecard, it would make an event larger than the olympics (winter and summer), fifa, rugby world cups and supwerbowls.All these helmet cams videos surfacing only prove that.
@Rogerio Reis you are so wrong…..This thinking is embraced by many people and is why we have so much bloodshed, so many wars, so much tragedy in our times. You cannot remove atrocities , killing and destruction when you bring guns, bombs, mines, warplanes to the table. Period. The very idea that Chase posted this video is that we, the humans, must open eyes and take in the fear, horror, pain, helplessness that this trained soldier feels so to never speak in favor of war. Please excuse my English, I’m from Bucharest, Romania.
Hello Adrian,
The very idea of sticking a camera to a your helmet as a soldier and film the action, publish it and get hundreds of thousands views on youtube is what this video is about.
I’m from and live in Brazil, we don’t have history with wars. but I believe that on the battlefield, the last thing I would think is “Hey, let me get a go-pro on my helmet and publish it”. This only proofs IMHO that wars such as this american effort on Afghanistan is truly meaningless It’s not like WW II where a soldier was liberating a concentration camp and ending holocaust. They are worried about getting it online! Too bad there’s no 3G or 4G in the afghan mountains, i’m sure there would be a lot of ustream channels then.
I’m not pro war. I just don’t deny that human history is filled with conflicts (and we can go way back on this. think greek wars) and this subject interests many many people (get the figures from war-related videogames sales.
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My comment is that if every war could be a global game of paintball (with paint tanks, paint mines) and merchandised it. It would sell a lot.
But hey, this is CJ’s blog and lets stick to it: As a documentary feature.the video it is incredible. From the comfort of our chairs we really don’t know what is like out there and this video gives us a glimpse. If robert capa had one of these on 1945, we surely wound’t have only 13 frames or so.
Rogerio,
Try to think of this as a little document of that time. We might, or might not, know the soldier’s intentions – but at least this makes us feel something. My hope is that these videos are viewed by people who will voice their opinion in future elections.
– John Paul Henry
Watching some of the other videos actually puts this one into some context – shows that this one is relatively calm! Which might explain his movements.
On all I’ve watched it so incredibly hard to see the opposition!
Wonder if it’s the camera lens or if it’s actually like that.