Combat Camera by Christian Hill – Book Review

Combat Camera by Christian Hill is his account of a 4-month tour as leader of a Combat Camera team from the British Media Operations Group. By virtue of his job, the author had an unmatched opportunity to witness, first-hand, the British military effort in Afghanistan in all its diversity; perilous and bureaucratic, disturbing and mundane.

This easy-to-read account, based on Christian Hill’s diary from Afghanistan, offers a highly informative and personal look at the British war (and media) machine in all its diversity.

May 2011, Afghanistan: Camp Bastion is under attack, the Sun’s Defence Editor is about to catch the wrong helicopter, and a famous TV war reporter is missing half his kit and wants his trainers back. Amid the chaos, Christian Hill is preparing to lead his Combat Camera Team on the British Army’s first big operation of the Helmand summer, inching through the IED-riddled fields of the notorious Green Zone, very probably getting shot at. A captain in the Media Operations Group, his job is to promote the war to the British media – and make it look like things are under control and getting better…

Funny, offbeat, shocking and affectionate, Combat Camera offers a unique insight into the military’s media operations in Afghanistan. As coalition troops return home after years of fighting, it will appeal to anyone who wants to know whether our campaign against the Taliban has really been worth the effort.

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#1 – Combat Camera – A Look at the Book

Combat Camera the book is a 276 soft-cover. The front shows a cameraman in military fatigues and a few goats (which appear only briefly in the book). Along with the author’s account of the war, the book includes two appendices on field reports, casualties in Afghanistan in 2011 and definitions of military terms.

The book is priced at £14.99 RRP, though a bit cheaper both on Amazon and from Alma Books.

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#2 – Combat Camera – A Look Inside the Book

Combat Camera is – obviously – a non-fiction book. The book recounts the experiences of the author, Christian Hill, during his 4-month tour in Afghanistan in 2011 as a Combat Camera Team leader, an news reporter with the British Forces (as opposed to a journalist working for a newspaper or TV channel). As the introduction notes, it is based on a diary he kept in Afghanistan.

Aside from the appendices, the book is split into three parts.

• The first and shortest part introduces the author himself, providing a bit of background on what he did before Afghanistan and how he became a reservist of the Media Operations Group. However, the very first chapter opens with a Hollywood-esque “action-scene-preview”, set, chronologically, later in the tale.
• The second part has the meat of the story; the bulk of the stories about the authors experiences in Afghanistan, covering the mundane, the shocking, the brutal, the puzzling and everything in between.
• The third part covers the author’s final days in Afghanistan and his return to Britain, as well as a few closing words.

As the book is based, for the most part, on a diary and (presumably) the journalistic articles that became of some of the observations, there is no overarching story arc.

In many ways, I thought this was the book’s greatest strength. As embedded journalist, Christian Hill saw War in Afghanistan from every conceivable angle – combat patrols, DfID reconstruction projects, dog-squads, the boredom of camp life, the horror of mine sweeping, the training of Afghan soldier, and much more besides.

It’s an amazing view at the many, many aspects, people and situations that define War in Afghanistan.

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#3 – Combat Camera – How Does It Read?

Starting the book, the first 30-odd pages of Combat Camera felt a bit choppy.

The book starts with a “right-into-the-action” scene of a grenade attack on a camp, before any context is given, only to cut back to a fast-forward overview of the author’s life and media-career – “Auntie Beep” being the BBC – before going to Afghanistan. Moreover, there seemed to be both more jokes and some foreshadowing of a conflict journalistic integrity vs. “the media-machine” in the early pages.

Neither really carries through into the main of the book. Though there are plenty of quips and insights on the sometimes grotesque bureaucracy of media in a war zone, they are hardly the main emphasis of the book.

Personally, I am happy Combat Camera did not go down this route.

Beyond page 40 or so, the book returns to a strict chronological order, moving from scene to scene. Christian Hill’s crisp style of writing works really well for this kind the diary-style format. The chapters are concise, packed with facts, and easily convey the scenes and characters (and you’ll meet a lot of odd people in this book), as well as the author’s thoughts and commentary.

The book’s real strength for me is the unusually wide access to nearly all aspects of the war the author enjoyed as embedded journalist, now sharing them in this book. This isn’t the tale of a single combat unit, or one specialized force. Combat Camera unfolds an unmatched kaleidoscope of different “snap-shots” from the war in Afghanistan, yet remains sufficiently grounded in the author’s personal experience to give the reader a sense of how it must have felt to have been in Afghanistan at the time.

Combat Camera is a fantastic “from-the-inside” account from the war in Afghanistan. I heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a well-written, honest look at the war in Afghanistan, especially from a British perspective. It is informative, easy to read and, often enough, disturbing in ways only war stories can be.

Give it a try!

Z.