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In 1917, Harry Lamin of Ilkeston, Great Britain, headed to army training camp and was soon shipped off to France to fight in World War I. Unlike today's wars, where the military may have the immediacy of email or cell phones, the only way soldiers then could communicate with their loved ones was through slow, inconsistent postal mail. Harry wrote letters to his wife Ethel, his sister Kate, and his brother Jack. His grandson recently discovered the wartime dispatches and started transcribing them on the same dates they were written, but 90 years later. Private Lamin is none too thrilled to meet action, and clearly misses his baby son. But he survives the massive Battle of Messines Ridge, of which General Plumer predicts: "Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography." This blog, like war, marches on, so check back to see how Harry fares in the rest of his journey. Along with his family, we eagerly await his return home.

The television drama "M*A*S*H" ran to hundreds of episodes and finished off with the most watched finale in American TV history. Now, an "interactive essay" from the Magnum Photo Agency uses images from the series to frame a slideshow of two military medical units operating in Iraq today. Grainy, black-and-white shots of Klinger, Hawkeye, and Radar contrast with color photographs of U.S. soldiers picking through rubble, blue-smocked military doctors bending over examination tables, Iraqi men on their knees, and uniformed men and women looking dead exhausted. Like the show, some sections reveal the unexpected aspects of life outside the military ER: men digging in to a bag of Doritos, smoking a cigar, laughing. But then the music shifts, the image clouds, and we're back in the Humvees, on conflict-torn streets, and in an all-too real war.

Frontline launched its fall season with this remarkable and in-depth look at the Taliban today and the 500 miles of "lawless, violent, and remote" land it inhabits along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. As with the PBS program's other online work, this companion site is skillfully produced, thoughtful, and even-handed. It lays out the "nightmare scenario" currently unfolding in the area. It relays interviews of astonishing access, including Q&As with Pakistan's president General Pervez Musharraf, American and Pakistani ambassadors, correspondents, and four Taliban leaders. Even a 23-year-old Winston Churchill surfaces with his 1897 take on this place "where every man is a soldier"—it could just as easily be said today. Finally, the site asks, and presents varying answers, to such chilling questions as: What kind of ally is Musharraf? What should, or could, the U.S. do? And can Afghanistan be saved?