In real, modern combat, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some soldiers have cameras attached to their helmets. The videos make it to YouTube (and on Kotaku, too), giving the rest of the world a first-person view of real combat.

This week, The New York Times presents a simultaneously stunning and mundane video of an ambush in Afghanistan, as seen through the helmet cam of one U.S. soldier. Such videos, the Times notes, make "personal brushes with combat look like first-person-shooter video games, though rawer and more chaotic and replete with real-life soundtracks of explosions, zinging bullets and muttered invectives."

The Times video shows a glimpse of just one harrowing day, December 8, 2010, a tougher day than I've ever had at my job. I can't embed the video here, but I urge you to watch it over at the NYT site. This is what we play, but real.

Combat in the First Person: Haruti [The New York Times]