THE TENSION: Combat Camera: Footage From the Frontlines

In this June file photo, Petty Officer 2nd Class Angela McLane, Fleet Combat Camera Group Pacific, documents U.S soldiers interacting with Iraqi people in a small town in the Diyala province of Iraq. (Photographer: Petty Officer 2nd Class Paul Seeber, 14th Public Affairs Detachment.)

In this file photo, Petty Officer 2nd Class Angela McLane, Fleet Combat Camera Group Pacific, treks through date palm groves in the Diyala province of Iraq while out on Operation Fire Fortress with 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment soldiers in June. (Photographer: Petty Officer 2nd Class Paul Seeber, 14th Public Affairs Detachment.)

In this June file photo, Petty Officer 2nd Class Angela McLane, Fleet Combat Camera Group Pacific, carefully films and interview being held by Iraqi media with an Iraqi police Officer. (Photographer: Petty Officer 2nd Class Paul Seeber, 14th Public Affairs Detachment.)

Dispatches from the Front:

FORWARD OPERATING BASE WARHORSE, Iraq, Oct. 25, 2008 -- “We’re here to, basically, document history,” said Mass Communication Specialist Petty Officer 2nd Class Angela McLane, Fleet Combat Camera Group Pacific. “We’re frontline cameramen.”

A common misconception of troops who have never gone out on missions with COMCAM Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, is that they never go outside the wire while deployed, said McLane, the non-commissioned officer in charge of combat camera and the resident COMCAM videographer at Forward Operating Base Warhorse, Iraq.

In reality, the photographers and videographers live up to their job titles.

“Combat Camera uses still and moving imagery to support military operations worldwide,” McLane said. “Any kind of conflict, war, crisis, anything like that, you’ll see combat camera there documenting it. Our job is to be there when something significant happens.”

COMCAM is a job that holds a unique significance to the military, McLane said.

“We capture history in the making, history as it’s happening,” she said. “This is how we can show the world, in current times and in years to come, what we are doing as a military and as a country. We can show all the good we are doing, as well as look back to learn from the mistakes that we have made in the past.”

McLane said as well as using COMCAM imagery for documentation and historical purposes, the military uses it for training purposes, as well.

“No one is perfect, but I think we can be as close to it as possible,” she said. “We can use COMCAM’s past imagery for that. If something is done wrong, we can reflect back on it, look back on it, and that way we can learn from history instead of repeat it.”

McLane said while most job fields in the military require troops to go out on specific types of missions, COMCAM is there for them all.

“I’ve been on night raids where they go and find bad guys, I’ve gone and documented where they have found weapons caches, I’ve been on missions where U.S. forces have had to disable snipers,” McLane said. “But I have also been on missions where the U.S. has assisted on new hospital wings opening, or where we have been training Iraqi army soldiers on new techniques to better handle the problems in their own country. COMCAM dabbles in a little bit of everything.”

McLane has even dabbled in a bit of battlefield injury, having recently taken some shrapnel in the arm from and improvised explosive device and subsequently refusing removal so she can continue her mission.

“The doc said that if they took it out it would cause more damage to my arm and prevent me from going out on missions for two weeks to a month,” she said. “I didn’t want to do that so I just decided to wait until I get home, because I’m here to accomplish a mission and that is to document all that the U.S. is doing out here.”

Despite the long missions, oppressive desert heat and thankless, quality time spent with video editing systems, McLane loves her job as a combat camera videographer because she gets to see the progress being made, first hand.

“I get to see the Iraqis starting to return to normalcy, just like I get to see U.S. and Iraqi forces catching bad guys,” she said. “The more bad guys we catch, the less violence there is and the less innocent people get hurt. And what I like the most is that I get to show that. I like to be able to show that we are helping to make that progress.”

(Report by Pfc. Alisha Nye, 14th Public Affairs Detachment.)