I began reading two blogs this weekend, both of which offer thought-provoking takes on soldiering and warfare.
The first consists of transcripts of Harry Lamin's letters from the first World War.
The letters are posted exactly 90 years after they were written. It's a great idea, and a powerful tool for studying history. One needs to keep reading the blog in order to find out what happens to Harry. Read it here.
The second blogger is Andrew Olmsted. He is in the news because he was killed on the 3rd January, while serving in the US army in Iraq. In the event of his death, he had arranged for this post to be made on his original blog (which he stopped posting on last year for fear of falling foul of the military's rules on political involvement). Since May 2007, he had been blogging for the Rocky Mountain News. He was clearly a thoughtful person who wrote movingly about his work, the politics involved and the frustrations he experienced.
Both of these blogs illustrate the power of the internet to inform and challenge. They certainly don't glamourise war.
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