I recently did an interview with Greyhawk of the Milblog The Mudville Gazette.   The Mudville Gazette now has a online show called Milblogs TV, that is very informative.  After watching Milblogs TV, I was reminded of the ingenuity of the Greyhawks, who were one of the first milblogs online, and also started the Milblogs Web Ring which brought together the community of milboggers (and helped spark my idea for Milblogging.com). 

Ah, I still remember in early 2005 joining the Milblogs Web Ring and listing my now-defunct Afghanistan blog “The National Guard Experience” and going from one loyal reader (Hi Mom) to hundreds.  How technology has changed. 

Oh you betcha I’m impressed by technology alright.  First of all there are no limits – there’s just more and more ways to communicate with a global audience including podcasts, blogging, social networks, videos, and more. 

So thanks to the Greyhawks for continuing to bring Milblogs into prominence.

Here’s a recent Milblogs TV episode called “The Battle of Sufia”



Check out the story that goes with this video here.

In a very brief email interview, Greyhawk was able to provide a little more insight into Milblogs TV.  I had to keep it brief because I kept losing my internet connection (damn you, technology). 

JP:  What got you started with the idea of Milblogs TV?

GREYHAWK:  After writing blog entries for over five years I found myself repeating myself... and frankly not very excited about doing so.

JP:  What does it take to create an episode of Milblogs TV?

GREYHAWK:  The basic software to make video is available to anyone with a PC - Windows MovieMaker is pre-installed on any Windows-based computer (and it's one of the simplest applications you'll ever find.) Apple has their own, too. Video is widely available on the web, as are sites to host the finished product. If a person has a computer, an internet connection, and a bit of time there are no other barriers to producing video content for the web. 

Beyond the technical aspects, I suppose it helps if you have a story you want to tell, can imagine what that story will look like in finished form, and are willing to spend the time to make that happen. That's true of written work or video production; the video creation is simply taking the word picture you wanted to create in the viewer's mind and offering an actual picture instead. 

JP:  Why do you think Milblogs TV is important?

GREYHAWK:  Television and the internet are on their way to becoming indistinguishable. New media will challenge "old" on that front in much the same way as blogs have taken on newspapers and magazines. Whatever importance "Milblogs TV" may have will be similar to the importance of milblogs; those who look will find it  - if it's there to find. As with readers, whatever the numbers of viewers may be they will matter, because if we aren't there the number will be zero - and if we don't speak for ourselves there will be plenty of folks ready to speak for us.

JP:  What’s your vision for Milblogs TV?

GREYHAWK:  The future? Note I was talking about "us" above. Like milblogs, the individual will be far less significant than the whole. I suspect the numbers involved will be smaller than the number of bloggers for several reasons - it takes a bit more effort to produce a decent video, some won't be willing to sacrifice the degree of anonymity required to put their voice (or even their face) on the web, and (milblogs-specific) the challenges (bandwidth, for instance) of video blogging from theater at this time are insurmountable (so the brass can relax on that issue for a while), but in spite of that I hope to see more people getting involved. 

I love to see one of my videos on other sites - especially those of fellow milbloggers, and I've already seen that happen. But ironically, I suspect the nature of the video medium might actually prove to be detrimental to the sort of group communication a blog can develop. A person with a day to spend creating content can generate multiple blog posts or one video. You can respond to something in writing in mere moments; decent video (something beyond the 'talking head' stuff that already permeates the web's video hosting sites) will take a bit longer - and the lifespan of a "hot" blog topic usually is less than one day. Readers are more likely to respond to the written word than viewers are to respond in writing to video. (That last bit is conjecture at this point...) You can't "link" supporting material or other blogs in a video, and lose the interaction generated that way, too.  I think the solution will be to merge the two and create written content that complements the video portion of a post.

JP:  What are the benefits of doing something like this?

GREYHAWK:  Finally, as with writing a blog, the reward is intangible. Either someone is driven to create and communicate or they aren't. Anyone who isn't self-motivated won't last long, anyone seeking external reward of some sort will fade out even quicker. 

But again, if you don't speak for yourself there will be others who are perfectly willing to speak for you.

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A Huntley Illinois Police Officer, Brett Kinney, who is also a Combat Medic with the Illinois National Guard will be writing a blog called Afghanistan Unfiltered during his upcoming deployment.  His entries will be posted by the Northwest Herald.  The Northwest Herald is a daily newspaper that publishes a number of blogs on its website ranging from military to prep athletes.

His first entry is amazingly well written and has all the makings of an exciting milblogger deployed to the front lines.  Personally, having deployed to Afghanistan myself back in 2004 to 2005, I can’t wait to read his blog.  Seriously, all I need in the morning are my daily military blogs to read and a cup of coffee - and I’m good to go.  Or, if it happens to be a Saturday morning I also need a large glass of water and several aspirin (now that I’m home stateside from Iraq and can take advantage of some of the finer things in life). 

You should see the look on my wife’s face as I crawl like a baby on the carpet from the bedroom to the bathroom, while making gurgling noises and blowing raspberries. 

Priceless.

Here’s an excerpt from Brett's very first entry:

I contacted the Northwest Herald and they have provided me a great opportunity to clear up some of this confusion. While I am deployed in Afghanistan, I am going to continually send letters home that will be transcribed onto this blog allowing people an unfiltered look into what kind of impact we are actually making in Afghanistan.

I also want to share the emotional side to a deployment. I will share with you personally what I feel as I go through the entire deployment proccess. In all, I want this to be a place where people can get a more personal look into what we are doing in Afghanistan and hopefully spark some quality conversations for or against the war on terror. So, to start off the conversation I will introduce myself.

I am a 26-year-old police officer for the Village of Huntley. I joined the Army in 2004 during my junior year at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After 15 months of training, I returned home and finished my degree at UIC. In September of 2007 I married my high school sweetheart and we bought a home together in Lakemoor. In October of 2007 we found out that I was going to be deployed to Afghanistan.

You can stay updated on his deployment here.

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My Platoon Sergeant from Iraq and fellow milblogger, Toby Nunn, made the news this week in The Vancouver Sun.  The article discusses his involvement in Bad Voodoo’s War.  Bad Voodoo’s War is a film we made during our deployment to Iraq while performing Convoy Security.  If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it for yourself online at PBS, and there’s even an interview with me here. 

The title of my interview is called “Milblogger Muscle”.  Seriously,  I didn’t make that up. The folks at PBS naturally picked the name after interviewing me.  That’s how awesome my muscles are.  Well, okay, it wasn’t so much about my impressive 8-inch biceps, as it was about my experience with military blogs.

Here’s an excerpt from the story that appeared in The Vancouver Sun:  

“Growing up in B.C., Toby Nunn never imagined he'd join the army, go to war, or become a celebrity -- let alone one of the most famous non-commissioned soldiers to serve with American forces in Iraq.

"I was just a scrawny kid from the bush up in Canada," he says.

Nunn, 33, shot to fame in the U.S. this year as the star of Bad Voodoo's War, a groundbreaking film from Iraq, broadcast to wide acclaim on PBS Television's Frontline documentary program in April.

The film was hailed by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, which said it showed "a very different view of the war than you'll see on the nightly news."

During the U.S. military "surge" in 2007, Nunn and his platoon wired up their humvees with video cameras from PBS, and filmed their mission escorting convoys of supplies, and dodging suicide bombers and IEDs, across the war-torn countryside.”

You can read the entire story here.  And if you’d like to read more about Toby Nunn, check out his website The Briefing Room.   He’s also a panelist at this year’s Milblog Conference.

Webmaster Update:  Just in case I do any more online videos, I thought it would be wise to come up with a few more creative titles.  I can’t give too many away due to the fact several of them are Patent Pending.  But a couple include “Milblogger Abs” and “Milblogger Calves”.  And see how I used the word “Milblogger” and the name of the muscle group in the title?  That makes the video that much more marketable.  It’s called Hollywood, people. 

Tune in next week for Milblogger Glutes:  The Forgotten Muscle.

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(Las Vegas Sun) The month before his Iraq deployment, Matt Gallagher started a blog.

Entitled "Kaboom: A Soldier's War Blog," his postings ranged from mission details to immortality and what would be included on a war soundtrack. To protect his identity and location, he went by the pseudonym "LT G" (for lieutenant), dubbed his platoon the Gravediggers and served in a place he called "Anu al-Verona."

Gallagher, a Reno native, announced June 27 that he had been ordered to stop posting to "Kaboom" because of his May 28 post: "The Only Difference Between Suicide and Martyrdom is Press Coverage."

Read the entire story here.

(The Day)  He was an unlikely warrior, this scrawny boy from Reno, Nev., the son of two lawyers, raised in the suburbs.

He had a way with words, this boy. When his Stryker unit deployed to Iraq last winter, he was a rookie platoon leader who had never seen combat. And like many other soldiers before him, he decided he'd chronicle the war on a blog. Intending to keep family and friends abreast of the follies and pitfalls of soldiering in a five-year-old war that now relies less on gunfire and more on diplomacy, this boy, under the pen name Lt. G, launched “Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal.”

Read the entire story here.

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(The Sudbury Star) In a remarkable series in The Sudbury Star over the past week, Dr. Ray Wiss recalled his experiences working as a medic in Afghanistan, tending to injured Canadian solders.

Dr. Wiss, an emergency room physician at Sudbury Regional Hospital, spent three months in Afghanistan in a tour that ended in February. He kept a diary of his mission, eventually pulling his notes together for a book he is seeking to publish to raise money for the Military Families Fund.

Wiss spent several weeks at forward operating bases, which allowed him a first-hand look at Canada's mission on the front lines.

His accounts of intense warfare, of the necessary preciseness of military procedure, and of painful moments dealing with the death of soldiers are a must-read for anyone who wants to form an informed opinion of Canada's mission in Afghanistan.(The entire seven-part series, which culminates today, will be available on the Star's website under "Special Sections" in the blue menu bar.)

Wiss figures he won't likely suffer psychologically, but he acknowledges the experience is something that is not easily allayed. "You just have to scratch a little bit at the surface and it comes out," he told Sudbury Star reporter Rachel Punch. "Sometimes, something will just trigger a memory and I'll just start to choke up."

In his diaries, Wiss describes the mission as 95 per cent boredom and five per cent terror, and he marvels at the medical facilities: "After a decade in Canadian emergency medicine, it is quite something to work in a system with vast overcapacity," he wrote.

Read the entire story here.

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(The Irish Times)  IN THE 50 degree-plus temperatures, rest and recuperation, or R&R, and the thoughts of a cooler home that go with it, can become an obsession for any British army Rangers with time on their hands in Afghanistan. For the officers it is less so, as the constant cycle of planning, orders and briefs keeps us busy. Nonetheless, in the days before my R&R is due, I find myself in countdown mode.

The night before we leave, it emerges our flight out has been postponed. The news is greeted with grins and jokes from those in the platoon who aren't due to go and silence from those who were. I tell them not to worry, we'll still get out.

Read the entire story here.

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(Argghhh! The Home of Two of Jonah’s Military Guys)  The fourth panel has been announced, and it sounds fascinating.  Some of us involved in the panels have also gotten a request for info that seems to imply there will be more interesting news coming out, soon.

So, check out the latest on the Conference blog or at the main BlogWorld site.  Andi has also put up some great info about lodging.  Since it's in Las Vegas both the airfare and lodging may be much more affordable than past years for some, making the trip more manageable.

Read the entire story here.

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(MTV.com) It was the kind of blog where references to Napoleon and Queen's greatest hits was mixed with shout-outs to classical pianist Fredric Chopin, "metrosexual drag queens," grim stories about Bon Jovi cassettes mistaken for IEDs and descriptions of the unrelenting Iraqi sun as a cruel taskmaster that "reigns with small flares of absolute tyranny, doling out punishment to the masses and the elite equally in spells of burning subjugation."

It was the blog Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal, and after seven months of highly literate, grippingly entertaining, funny, scary, strange and unblinkingly honest posts from its author, known as Lt. G, the Army shut it down last month.

Read the entire story here.

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I found this interesting article using Google BlogSearch.  The writer, a part-time student at Georgetown University, discusses whether military blogs and other Web 2.0 "new media" like YouTube help spread patriotism or simply serve to glorify the war.  In one statement, she writes:

”I wonder if teenagers sit at home and watch footage from Iraq and think that war is “cool,” or that blowing things up or shooting machine guns is fun- as it is often portrayed in some of the videos.”

In my honest opinion, I think teenagers deserve more credit. Seriously.  I believe teenagers these days are smarter, brighter, and more insightful than she makes them out to be.  Well, that’s not entirely true...

Just the other day I gotta call from my sixteen year old little brother-in-law and he was like, “Dude...JP...you gotta come over and play Call of Duty 4 on my Xbox...it’s just like being in Fallujahs.” 

Yes, plural.    

Here’s an excerpt from her entry.

(DC Maven)  Web 2.0 has revolutionized the way America sees war- specifically, the War on Iraq.  By “seeing” I’m not referring to your opinion on the war itself, rather our ability to now visualize what it’s like for our soldiers overseas.  Soldier’s blogs (or milblogs), YouTube, Flickr- all of these have allowed us to view videos, pictures and read first-hand accounts of what it’s really like to be at war.  This week I took some time to survey what’s out there- and it’s amazing the sheer amount of media that’s available to us about the war.  One particular blog I found interesting- Thunder Run- has been up and running since July 2005.  This blog offers news round-ups on the war, links to other milblogs, links to media sites dedicated to the military, and lots of war footage videos.  Other blogs, such as Another Adventure, offer more personal accounts of the war, such as relationships fostered with other soliders, the food in their camps, and packages sent from home.  There’s thousands of others, all compiled at Milblogging.com, and sorted by topic and country.

Read the entire story here.

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(The Sudbury Star) The Sudbury Star is running a series of excerpts from a diary kept by Sudbury's Dr. Ray Wiss when he was serving in Afghanistan from November to February. He spent most of his time stationed at two forward operating bases on the front lines of the war. Here is the third set of entries.

Read the entire story here.

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(Knutsford Guardian)  A SOLDIER’S handwritten account of the Second World War has been transcribed by his son after his diary lay in a drawer for half a century.

Harold Jenkins, who lived in Merriman Avenue, Knutsford, until his death in 1972, recorded his experiences of travelling in three continents between 1939 and 1945.

“He talked about the war every now and then and he did point out that he’d done the book,” said his son John, 65.

“He laughed about going to 22 countries at our country’s expense.”

The small notebook and some medals from Mr Jenkins’ service in the Cheshire Regiment were eventually passed on to his son, but he did not read the diary until he retired.

Read the entire story here.

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(The Sandbox)  A few weeks back, frequent Sandbox contributor LT G was ordered to stop posting on his milblog Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal, as his final post there explains. More detail is provided by this story, which appeared today in the Style section of the Washington Post.

Read the entire story here.

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(The Ledger)  He was an unlikely warrior, this scrawny boy from Reno, Nev., the son of two lawyers, raised in the suburbs.

He had a way with words, this boy. When his Stryker unit deployed to Iraq last winter, he was a rookie platoon leader who had never seen combat. And like many other soldiers before him, he decided he'd chronicle the war on a blog. Intending to keep family and friends abreast of the follies and pitfalls of soldiering in a five-year-old war that now relies less on gunfire and more on diplomacy, this boy, under the pen name Lt. G, launched "Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal."

An indictment of the war it was not. Lt. G's dispatches - at turns hilarious, maddening and terrifying - provided raw and insightful snapshots of a conflict many Americans have lost interest in.

Word got around, and more and more readers closely followed the postings of 25-year-old Lt. Matthew Gallagher, with the site drawing tens of thousands of page views. By the time Kaboom went kaput last month - Lt. G was ordered to take down his blog - it had a following that would be the envy of many a small-town paper.

Read the entire story here.

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Over the last few weeks I’ve had the chance to meet up with friends, supporters, and longtime readers of my blog.  A couple weeks back I met up with Kathi and her husband Tony.  Kathi has been a longtime reader and supporter since my first deployment to Afghanistan in 2004 when I wrote my first 'now defunct' milblog “The National Guard Experience”.  The day started off with us visiting and paying our respects at Arlington National Cemetery, and we ended the day with lunch at a nearby restaurant. 

Supporters - they are what makes military blogging so special.  And I must say, getting a chance to meet Kathi and Tony was an honor.  What's amazing to me: Kathi's stepson is currently deployed to Iraq.  And while I was in Iraq, she still had the time and energy to think of me and support me.

Here’s a photo and excerpt from Kathi’s account of the meet up:

(Note: The person pictured far left is me.  It’s also my driver’s license photo.)

Kathi writes:

This past weekend, my husband and I had the pleasure of meeting JP and his family, and also seeing his mother again,( whom I'd met at the 2007 Milblog conference.)

(yes, JP temporarily lifted the restraining order, lol......however, he Did make sure that we met in a public place :)

You can read Kathi’s entire account on her blog. 

I also want to say Thank you to everyone who supported me during my deployments. And my entire family sends out a huge “thank you” also. Hopefully you’ll join us at the 2008 Milblog Conference in Las Vegas.

We can even have a big group hug during Saturday’s opening of the conference.

But please be warned - after a Friday night of partying in Vegas, don’t hug me too hard.  Usually when I drink too much, my stomach gets kinda weird.

I’m just saying.

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(Martha’s Vineyard Times)  Charles Macreading Vincent, "Charlie Mac," was one of eight young Edgartown men who fought in the Civil War. Only 19 when he enlisted in 1862, Charlie Mac was confident that the war would soon be over, and he maintained an almost religious faith in the patriotic ideals that led him to enlist. In this he was no different from most young soldiers; however what makes Charlie Mac unique is that he kept a record of his experiences. In addition to keeping an almost-daily diary, Charlie wrote many long letters to his family and friends back home.

These documents have been collected in a single volume, "Your affectionate son, Charlie Mac: Civil War Diaries & Letters by a Soldier from Martha's Vineyard," due to be launched at the Martha's Vineyard Museum Thursday, July 24. Researched and assembled by Marian Halperin, the book documents and records the Civil War from a single soldier's perspective.

Read the entire story here.

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(The Washington Post)  He was an unlikely warrior, this scrawny boy from Reno, Nev., the son of two lawyers, raised in the suburbs.

He had a way with words, this boy. When his Stryker unit deployed to Iraq last winter, he was a rookie platoon leader who had never seen combat. And like many other soldiers before him, he decided he'd chronicle the war on a blog. Intending to keep family and friends abreast of the follies and pitfalls of soldiering in a five-year-old war that now relies less on gunfire and more on diplomacy, this boy, under the pen name Lt. G, launched "Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal."

An indictment of the war it was not. Lt. G's dispatches -- at turns hilarious, maddening and terrifying -- provided raw and insightful snapshots of a conflict many Americans have lost interest in.

Read the entire story here.

More on the story over at Blackfive.

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(Reno Gazette-Journal)  Military blogs, or "milblogs," number in the thousands, serving as the voices of soldiers and their families and friends.

An Army policy updated last year worried some milbloggers about the future of posting. The policy requires Army personnel to "consult with their immediate supervisor and their OPSEC [operations security] Officer for an OPSEC review prior to publishing or posting information in a public forum."

After closure of the popular milblog "Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal" last month, milbloggers remain in disagreement about what effects the policy has had on soldiers posting to the Internet.

Jean-Paul Borda, Web master and founder of the site milblogging.com, said he hasn't noticed a decline in blogging since the policy was put in place.

"A lot of people said (the policy) was the last nail in the coffin, but I don't see it as that way," said Borda, who was deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past five years. "I don't see it in that way because there are so many people out there who are writing.

Read the entire story here.

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(Tanker Brothers)  Please email me or leave a comment of anyone you would like to see added to this list along with any details that cn be added as a link. Come on everyone, lets present to the world the truly heroic, inspirational, motivational and downright decent people we have met on our travels as part of the Milblogging Community!!

Read the entire story here.

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(From My Position...On The Way)  I was going to write a post about the chicken-shit "leadership" I have in this outfit, but it violates rule #1 of milblogging.

Read Chuck’s blog and comment here.

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