The video: A stunning first-person video from the helmet camera of an unnamed U.S. soldier in Afghanistan has captured an intense exchange of gunfire between the soldier, his squad, and Taliban insurgents. (Watch the clip below.) Shot in the notoriously dangerous Kunar Province, the clip is part of a series of footage that YouTube user Funker 530 uploads daily to his channel to document the war in Afghanistan. The video shows the unnamed soldier shooting and yelling for help as he steps out into the open to draw gunfire away from the rest of his squad. "I got hit a total of four times," YouTube user Funker530 says in the video's description. "My helmet cam died and I made it down the mountain on my own." Thankfully, none of the shots managed to penetrate the soldier's body armor.
The reaction: "This is real war as you've never seen it before," says Simon Crerar at Australia's Herald Sun. The footage is "reminiscent of the first-person viewpoint popularized by computer games such as Call of Duty and Halo," making the video simultaneously entertaining and sobering. It's no surprise, then, says the New York Post, that the video has "brought the war home to computers around the world." Take a look:
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