A few years back, a war correspondent released some footage of their time attached to a Royal Marine Section on patrol in Afghanistan.

A few years back, a war correspondent released some footage of their time attached to a Royal Marine Section on patrol in Afghanistan.


Those were professional soldiers, babysitting an embedded journalist.

The eight man section moved carefully in a loose formation, talking amongst themselves as they cleared possible threats and scouted ahead.

 Everything seemed fine, the countryside looked picturesque and peaceful as the small detachment walked through fields and along drainage ditches.

Suddenly, clouds of dust start leaping up all around the section, followed by loud cracks and the repetitive thud of heavy automatic machine gun fire.

Within the blink of an eye, the royal marines respond to the ambush, some of them dropped to a knee laying down suppressive fire while rest moved to a nearby stone wall (unceremoniously dragging the journalist with them).

Bullets were hammering their position, dust was everywhere obscuring their sight, frankly, they were just eight men hopelessly isolated in the middle of nowhere, trapped in an ambush that had their small force pinned down.

The war correspondent captured what followed perfectly — the section began returning fire and RM commandos can be heard sniggering and calling the Taliban “cheeky bastards”.

Two of the eight man force volunteered to flank the enemy and provide fire support, running off into the dust while all around them machine guns were cracking away and bullets are flying.

This small force of soldiers should have been terrified, but instead they proceeded to radio HQ and request orders to advance on the enemy. 

When they were instead ordered to fall back and return to base (because you know, that whole attached journalist thing), they started grumbling that “command is being fucking boring”.

With their backs against a wall (literally), alternating turns exchanging heavy automatic gunfire with the Taliban, the small force began bantering, laughing about what movie to watch when they returned to base.

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