Forgotten Combat Video from Afghanistan

 30 July 2013

Last week the Kopp-Etchells series experienced another revival.  For four years the work has been translated into dozens of languages and seen ‘round the world in hundreds if not thousands of outlets ranging from Ripley’s Believe it or Not!, to the Smithsonian.  A Google search of “Kopp Etchells Effect” returns about 60,000 hits.

Last week Kyle Hill performed an analysis of the Effect (not caused by static) on the Nautilus blog, which was picked up by the Scientific American blog, which was picked up by the Daily Mail (UK), which was picked up by the Examiner (UK), and picked up by Fox at least twice, which inspired this excellent video. 

The images have grown wings and have left the nest.  Derivative links keep coming.    Many people, however, have not actually read the original piece.

Yet that is not the point of this dispatch, which is that I was digging through the old archives to provide more images to Jill Stephenson, mother of Benjamin Kopp, when I came across a trove of old combat images and videos, already forgotten, from the same time and same area.

In this combat video (shot and narrated live by me), British troops are on some kind of combat mission. I do not recall what we were doing other than that every time we left the wire, firefights and bombs were expected.  This was no “disappointment.”

This video is unedited.  It is a stream of raw, combat consciousness.  It starts and ends naturally.

Forgotten Combat Video from Afghanistan