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Blogs Chronicle War from Soldiers' Perspectives
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Who's Blogging  |
While Buzzell and Bout blogged from the frontlines, the military blogosphere is far more expansive.
Pieced together, the milblogging community covers all aspects of modern military life. In addition to active duty soldiers, there are veterans like Matthew Currier Burden who run popular sites updating the community on the latest news from the war. Burden's blog "Blackfive" gets an average 20,000 views a day, though it sometimes spikes to over a million, according to Burden. There also are family members who blog, such as military wife Andi Hurley of the blogs "Andi's World" and "SpouseBUZZ," who discuss issues they face on the homefront.
The exact number of milblogs on the Internet is unknown. The Mudville Gazette hosts a Web ring of about 450 milblogs. Milblogging.com has more than 1,700 registered milblogs and an online subject search via Web clearinghouse Technorati shows more than 2,500 blogs on the military. These numbers continue to grow.
Early in the Iraq war, the military shut down some milblogs over concerns that soldiers were violating operational security or OPSEC.
Buzzell of "My War" wrote from June to September 2004, until he faced censorship and stopped blogging. Buzzell's witty and sarcastic entries on life as a machine gunner in Mosul gained him quick popularity. He believed superiors first became aware of the blog's existence after an entry was quoted in a newspaper account of an ambush.
Commanders told Buzzell what he could write about in his blog because they were concerned that he could endanger the mission.
"I think I understand their concerns, you don't want Private Somebody over there releasing secrets or putting soldiers in jeopardy," Buzzell said.
After he continued posting, Buzzell was told that although he "wasn't being punished," he could not leave his base until "further notice," Buzzell wrote in his book "My War: Killing Time in Iraq."
He told a Wall Street Journal reporter about his predicament. Once the reporter began to investigate, Buzzell said he was allowed to participate in missions again after about a week of being confined to his base.
After this situation, he posted one blog entry that was pre-screened by his first sergeant. Then he decided to quit.
"I knew subconsciously that if the Army found out, I would probably get in trouble," Buzzell said.
His scolding was minor compared to the punishment Jason Christopher Hartley received four months later, Buzzell said.
