Afghan Christmas

Fg Off Tony Newton reports on his experiences bringing Afghan Christmas cheer into UK homes

I’d been tasked by Air Command to take a Mobile News Team to Kandahar and Bastion, record as many Christmas messages as we can from personnel across all three services, and bring the resulting material back to the UK for processing and uploading to the RAF’s website. With me was videographer Cpl Dylan Browne, and we were hosted in theatre by Flt Lt Chloe Bridge who manages media operations for 83 Expeditionary Air Group. Chloe had lined up sessions for us with many of the units represented in Bastion, and by the end of the project we’d recorded over 250 Christmas messages.



With mobile phones banned in theatre and Paradigm cards limited to 30 mins per week for phone calls and internet, the opportunity to send a personal Christmas message to loved ones back home is one of which many took advantage.

We’d brought a few props with us, but ‘liberated’ something extra from each unit we visited: an inflatable snowman we christened Orville, various bits of tinsel , a table top Christmas tree and- our favourite- a cardboard cut-out reindeer.

The props came in handy to break the ice and the messages varied from straight and businesslike to wonderfully cheesy. Some made great use of the props, others none at all, but the end effect was much the same- a personal heartfelt message from theatre to loved ones back at home. Emotion came to the surface readily, and it’s great that no-one was embarrassed by this.

Here’s how the Christmas messaging worked. We set up our video camera in the best location we could find, trying to ensure that the background reflected the speaker’s working environment. Offices and conference rooms don’t make great video, so we went for external settings wherever possible. Each participant was given a card printed with a unique password and an RAF web address, so that only those given that password back at home would be able to view the message- so the output was both personal and very secure
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On Christmas Eve- and not before- to ensure a sense of occasion- all 250 plus messages went live to be viewed on Christmas Day by family and friends. Those messages will now stay visible until at least mid January to ensure the maximum possible viewing opportunity.

Media interest in the project was surprisingly high, but emphasised the importance of having a specific concept or ‘package’ to sell in to busy producers and planners, and of tailoring that package for specific regional needs. In this case, it meant identifying service personnel with families in each of the BBC TV regions, then getting the ‘buy in’ of those families to be interviewed.

Each regional package comprised a combination of bespoke footage (an interview with the selected service person about what they’re doing out there and what it’s like to be away at this time of year, cutaways of that person doing their normal job out in Afghan, and of the messaging process underway) with ‘boilerplate’ interview footage with Officer Commanding 903 Expeditionary Air Wing and the RAF Padre and some background footage of helicopters lifting from Camp Bastion.

To complete the story, all the regional media then had to do was to interview the family and get shots of them logging in to receive their personal Christmas message.

To anyone thinking that managing a Mobile News Team is just about turning up and swanning around with a video camera, I’d remind them that the ‘selling in’ process involved a lot of extra legwork but it made the difference between capturing a lot of material that ends up sitting on a hard drive and creating stories that made it on to BBC Scotland, BBC Wales, BBC Look East, Look North and Look West plus BBC Three Counties Radio.