The Telegraph reports that a British Army Lieutenant Colonel will use Twitter from the front line in Afghanistan.
Lieutenant Colonel Dougie Graham, commanding officer of the Royal Highland Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, said he plans to send regular updates during their six-month tour.
Although his men’s military manoeuvres will remain confidential, Lt Col said there will be plenty of material to keep loved ones and the wider public interested.
“I would like to be able to give people a feel for the reality because it’s not all fighting, it’s not all bombs and bullets,” he said.
…He said he was unaware of another military commander previously using Twitter, but insisted he was not “reinventing the wheel”.
“I’m a pragmatist and most of my friends communicate with each other these days through Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. It was a very obvious thing to do” he said.
My own fine nation’s military has mostly had a hate-hate relationship with the social-networking service, from worrying that terrorists might use it to planning to ban it to banning it to, just this past summer, not banning it, along with Facebook, Flickr and other social networking tools.
As far as I can find, Lt. Col. Graham’s tweets will be the first from the front line by a senior officer.
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