YouTube circulates 'unfiltered' war views

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By Kara Rowland

The hardest thing in the world is to leave someone behind for six months, Senior Aircraftman Paul Goodfellow tells a hand-held camera as he crouches in what looks like a bathroom.

"It's not just saying bye for six months," the young member of Britain's Royal Air Force Regiment says on his way to Afghanistan in April 2007. "There's always the thought that maybe I might not come back and maybe we might not see each other again."

Mr. Goodfellow bade farewell to his girlfriend on a beach in South Shields, England, but was keeping in touch with loved ones - and the rest of the world - through a series of daily video diaries on YouTube during his deployment with the No. 51 Squadron in Kandahar province.

The clips gave viewers candid glimpses into the daily life of an RAF gunner. He spoke about his feelings and captured the everyday details of being in the military, such as weapons drills or going on patrol. He shared insights into the people and landscapes around him.

"It ended up being a personal account of one lad's life out in Afghanistan," said Mr. Goodfellow, 23, who now resides in Suffolk, England, where he recruits for the RAF. "I think that was important because people don't know what's going on. In the U.S., the troops get welcomed home like heroes, whereas here in the U.K., it's nothing like that; nobody knows what we're doing."

Scores of videos like Mr. Goodfellow's offer direct access to all aspects of military service - especially those ignored or cast aside by mainstream media. Troops playing soccer with Iraqi children, hostage rescue missions, shootouts with insurgents and montages put together by wives are just some of the uncensored clips on YouTube.

"If you look nightly on the news, particularly in the last few years, there are so many stories that are negative or that are questioning the military in one way or another, or raising doubts about it," YouTube spokesman Chris Dale said.

"This really gives you an unfiltered look. They're not slickly produced; it's just a very honest and straightforward interpretation of some of the conditions on the ground."

One video posted on the YouTube channel for the Multi-National Force in Iraq shows a night raid by members of the Iraqi Security Force in Kirkuk. The group was responding to citizens' tips about the location of an 11-year-old boy being held hostage by a kidnapping cell that was demanding a $100,000 ransom from his father, who works as a mechanic.

The language spoken in the video is Arabic, but the sequence of events is not difficult to understand. The Iraqi soldiers rub the boy's head after rescuing him from his captors and give him a cell phone to call his parents. The clip ends with women crying for joy as they run to him in the night.