Some war-zone documentaries offer up-close combat footage, giving viewers a front-row seat to a platoon's scramble to track an insurgent, or to the bone-chilling moment when a routine patrol turns into a firefight.

Some focus the lens away from the front lines, tracking generals as they encourage and admonish local leaders, or following troops in a control room draped in the latest surveillance technology, trying to separate good guys from bad via high-altitude video.

"The Fighting Season," a six-part docu-series produced by Ricky Schroder that debuts May 19 on DirecTV's Audience Channel (Channel 239, 9 p.m. Eastern/Pacific), does both, granting access to the operational and the tactical, the election security and the night raids, the politics and the profanity, over a three-month span in Afghanistan in the spring of 2014.

Screen shot from DirecTVÕs The Fighting Season

Screen shot from DirecTV's "The Fighting Season"

Photo Credit: Screen shot

A team of five cameramen fanned out over a wide area in theater, tracking coalition interaction with Afghan National Police forces in Kabul and embedding with units based at Forward Operating Base Shank, among other locations. They captured everything from soldiers sneaking a Skype call home or a smoke break into their routine duties to one platoon's day outside the wire that included coming within a few yards of a potential female suicide bomber ... and then got worse.

How does a film crew get such access to what's billed as the closing chapters in a dozen-plus-year war? Just how you'd expect: A conversation between a lieutenant general and a filmmaker who came to fame as a pre-teen sitcom star in the 1980s.

'America's moved on'

"I met Gen. Joe through some charity work six years ago," Schroder said in a May 6 interview, speaking of Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, who until recently served as commanding general of XVIII Airborne Corps and headed the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command in 2014. "We met at social events. He went as a general, and I went as a famous person."

The two became friends, and Schroder, who had already worked with the Army producing the "Starting Strong" recruitment series, met up with Anderson in February 2014, shortly before the general headed to the war zone.

"I could tell he was more serious and concerned than I'd seen him before, and I said, 'Joe, what's going on?' He wasn't his completely up, positive self," Schroder recalled. "He said, 'I'm going to war with these guys, and America's moved on.' Those were his words to me ... America's moved on, nobody was paying attention.

"So I said, 'General, can I bring cameras? We'll force people to pay attention.' "

A few weeks later, Schroder and a small team were en route to the combat zone, planning to embed with troops who would be participating in the spring "fighting season" from which the series takes its name. Schroder jumped from location to location, spending a week at a time with his dispersed crew as they compiled more than 800 hours of footage.

"If you just let your soldiers tell your story, they'll do a better job than anyone else," said retired Army Col. Jim Rabon, a West Point grad and former chief of staff for 1st Armored Division who met Schroder through "Starting Strong" and served as an executive producer on the project. "That's just what we wanted to do."

It's safe to say that most of Schroder's subjects were not deeply familiar with his time on "Silver Spoons" or "NYPD Blue."

"The soldiers I was embedded with were 20, 19, 22, and I was known to them as 'the camera guy,' " Schroder said. "They would yell to me, 'Hey, camera guy! Come film this!' ... I loved that, because I was just the camera guy to them. I wasn't the producer, I wasn't that guy who'd been on TV. I really, really liked that."

Schroder recalled one embed when the unit called in air support after taking fire from four enemy positions, then had to cross an open valley to conduct a post-bombing assessment. He and his camera followed, not knowing whether all of the threats had been silenced.

"All of a sudden, you're in the green zone," he said. "I'm looking around at all of these young soldiers, eager to do it — never hesitant. Eager. I was blown away by that mentality, that commitment, that conviction."

Screen shot from DirecTVÕs The Fighting Season

"The Fighting Season" tracks trigger-pullers, but also soldiers in charge of UAV use or coordinating election security with Afghanistan police.

Photo Credit: Screen shot/Courtesy of DirecTV

They also captured enlisted soldiers raising concerns with an officer's tactics. And of troops on smoke breaks, or liberally dropping f-bombs, or impersonating the late Steve Irwin, better known as "The Crocodile Hunter," while giving hushed accounts of the need to track and capture the Taliban.

While all the footage went through the appropriate operational security vetting, Schroder and Rabon said they received no notes or warnings from the Army or the Pentagon when it came to telling what they saw as the whole story.

Screen shot from DirecTVÕs The Fighting Season

Cameramen from "The Fighting Season" covered ground (and air) operations throughout Afghanistan, from close-quarters engagements to high-level officer meetings.

Photo Credit: Screen shot/courtesy of DirecTV

"There was no pushback on being truthful and honest," Schroder said. "None. I got pushback from former officers, other consultants that I may have shown things to, they would kind of try to talk me out of putting some of those real-life conflicts in the piece. I never let them win, because that's what kind of made the project special — that unfiltered look."

Schroder and Rabon funded the filming, but had no distribution plans for the story, one they knew could be a tough sell for a media landscape sensing war fatigue.

"It was a hard road," Rabon said. "We pitched the idea to a lot of people."

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 01: Actor Ricky Schroder attends The Friars Club: "So You Think You Can Roast?" Celebrating Ricky Schroder at New York Friars Club on March 1, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)

Actor Ricky Schroder attends The Friars Club: "So You Think You Can Roast?" Celebrating Ricky Schroder at New York Friars Club on March 1, 2013, in New York City.

Photo Credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images

Then Schroder sent an email to Michael White, chief executive officer of DirecTV. A deal was put together within 36 hours of White watching the trailer. It came so fast that final edits are still in process for much of the series, Schroder said.

Once complete, the filmmaker has a target audience in mind.

"Victory [for the project] is if soldiers look at this and say to their friends and family, 'If you want to know what Afghanistan is like, watch this,' " he said.

About Kevin Lilley

Kevin Lilley is the features editor of Military Times.

Share:
In Other News
Load More