Correspondance At War
Reading through Since You Went Away, a compilation of letters from American women on the home front to men serving overseas, I found an interesting connection in Chapter 5. In and among the photographs in the pictorial essay section, several of the posters featured V-Mail prominently. As explained in the book, V-Mail was a system where letters were written on specially sized paper, then photographed; it ended up being cheaper, and more compact, to send reels of film to be developed in-theater, compared to writing, shipping, and delivering tons of airmail. The poster in specific is below, although others were also informative:
For its time, V-Mail was certainly innovative, enough for a massive publicity campaign to surround it. By filming up these letters, space and weight was saved, and upon reaching the theater, the letters were re-sent, as high-quality photos. Though some of the writers noted their fear for privacy, for the most part it was well-regarded.
Today, the issue of fearing for privacy isn’t coming from the soldiers and their loved ones, but instead is something which affects the U.S. Military. With such an array of technology as email, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, blogs, Skype, and dozens of voice-over-IP and instant messenger programs, staying in touch is no longer a problem. This deluge of free-floating information is exactly the opposite of the 1940’s worries; privacy is no longer an issue for many of these, since as soon as they’re out, everybody who sees it will know the info. So, now the issue is that the military doesn’t want important information floating around on cyberspace, like Geraldo’s map in the sand which nearly got the reporter thrown out of Iraq in 2003. As early as 2004 the Pentagon was censoring soldiers’ blogs.
Blogs in particular are replacing letters, diaries, and journals, acting as multi-function records of events. With the War on Terror, military blogs, or milblogs, are booming, with entire sites dedicated to them. The concept has even spread to the major news media, with the New York Times operating an “At War” blogger station for military personnel serving overseas.
At War is a reported blog from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era, expanding the scope of its predecessor, Baghdad Bureau (whose contents have been incorporated here). The New York Times’s award-winning team of correspondents, photographers, videographers and local interpreters provide insight — and try to answer your questions — about the combatants shaping events along political, military and religious faultlines, and the civilians caught in the middle.
Posts include one soldier’s re-enacting of a hometown tradition, a bicycle race, held at an air base south of Baghdad. The post, “From Lancaster to Iraq: A Thanksgiving Day Racing Tradition,” details the race held on base in memory of the race held back at home:
Among the hundreds of things I miss about home during my year in Iraq is the Turkey Day bike race in Lancaster County, Penn. This unofficial final race of every season draws 50 or more racers from around the county, and it shows which cyclists kept up with their fitness routines since the end of the season in September. So when I finally got a chance to organize a bike race on Tallil Ali Air Base after six months here, I wanted it to be on Thanksgiving Day.
In another example, “The Digital Fog of War,” a soldier comments on the lack of dedicated electronics available to soldiers on par with the civilian smartphone, a critique on the way the U.S. Army handles its technology, made more interesting by the fact it appears in blog format:
A senior noncommissioned officer who just completed a stint as a drill sergeant recently told me, “Today’s soldiers are the Xbox generation. They might not be as physically tough or in shape but they sure are digitally savvy.”
To members of the Xbox generation, however, military hardware and software seem to date from the Atari era: Too often it is bulky, confusing and impractical.
In terms of software, the main culprits for the Army’s Luddite setup here is a weak architecture and lack of interoperability between systems.
Compared to the past, we currently live in a technological paradise, a world of far-reaching technological advancements. Let’s not forget that the Al-Qaeda and Taliban cells wield brick-like cell phones along with their AK’s, coordinating via text messages, email, and chat clients. As technology continues to grow, new issues and problems will emerge, such as the line between privacy and secrecy.
November 3, 2009, 12:19 pm. The Digital Fog of War. By TIM HSIA
November 26, 2009, 1:13 pm. From Lancaster to Iraq: A Thanksgiving Day Racing Tradition By SGT. NEIL GUSSMAN
At War Blog: Notes from the Front Lines. http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/
