Over the last few nights, CBC has been boasting of some new combat footage it's gotten of the Princess Pats in Afghanistan. It is indeed riveting, but they never show more than 15 or 20 seconds of it. And given that with the CBC, that it's all about the CBC, where are the feature stories about the intrepid cameraman (or let it be a woman! We'd never hear the end of it!) who put his butt on the line to get these images?
So I wander over to the CBC's website to see if they've put it up there. Nope -- not even the stories in which it was used.
Next stop, the DND's video archives. They have four pages of Afghanistan-related stuff, but none of the videos I'm looking for.
So I try YouTube. Bingo!
They were shot by Army combat photographers, which might explain the CBC's coyness as to their origin. Some are jarring, like this clip of an ambush:
Or strangely beautiful, like this dawn raid on a Taliban compound:
More here, here, here, here, and here.
Warning: Much noisy thunderstick activity and various other wizbangs. There's no obvious blood and gore. In fact, I can state that no Canadians (as far as I can see) were harmed in the production of these videos. As for the Taliban, I don't think they were quite that lucky. You will also find out that soldiers tend to use a certain 4-letter word (the Swiss Army Knife of obscenity, if you will) liberally. Though I've heard worse at some hockey games.
Or if you'd like a more leisurely-paced account of the battles in Panjawai province, here's an email from a Forward Observation Officer:
When the Company Commander asked me what the safety distance for a hellfire was I literally had to go to the reference manual I carry (J Fires Manual) because I had never seen one before and had no idea what it actually could do. I told him the safety distance was 100m. To which he asked how far we were from the compound � the laser said 82m. We debated the ballistic strength of the mud wall beside us and in the end he decided to risk it. Nothing like seeing an entire Company in the fetal position pressed up against a mud wall! The hellfire came in and it was the loudest thing I have ever heard.