This amazing short video at the NY Times by C.J. Chivers captures the smaller moments of war and their relationship to the landscape. Hiding behind simple, surprisingly resiliant mud walls, a group of Marines hold a position against Taliban insurgents with WWII-era sniper rifles.
It’s just flat and utterly empty Helmand Province landscape (no trees, no hills, just flat, packed dirt) and bullets from an unseen source. And almost nothing happens. Certainly, lives are at stake, but overall it’s the mundanity and strangely purgatory nature of it that is so interesting.
Unfortunately no embedding of video from the Times.
Via: NY Times
Image above by: Tyler Hicks