Vik Franke, a Dutch documentary filmmaker in Afghanistan, first shot a roadside ambush by the Taliban with his camera. But when the camera's batteries died, he picked up a machine gun and helped the Dutch commandos and other NATO troops fire back.

An excerpt from the Oct. 25 People's Daily Online:

It is not known whether the filmmaker killed anyone. But NATO estimates that about 20 insurgents were killed in the fighting. Several civilians were also wounded in the incident.

The filmmaker, Vik Franke, was producing a documentary on the activities of the Dutch Commando Corps troops.

On Oct. 11, he took part in a patrol along with about 25 members of the Dutch special forces, several U.S. troops and an Afghan army unit.

Six km from the base the vehicle hit a roadside bomb, killing one Afghan soldier and wounding nine others.

The men were then fired on from three sides by a large group of Taliban fighters, who had planned the ambush. The documentary maker continued filming until his camera battery died.

"We wanted to withdraw to a dry river bed but we were also being fired on from that side," said Franke. "I once learned in military service that in a situation like that you should return fire. That's why I took the Diemaco from a commando and shot in the direction of a cornfield where the muzzle flashes from Taliban weapons could be clearly seen."

Franke has raised many eyebrows among military personnel in Afghanistan because of the operational details he revealed about his time with the troops. He talked about his "tour of duty" and called the commandos "my comrades-in-arms," according to the paper.

This story was first reported Tuesday in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. I heard about it through a CAJ-L post by Shawn Blore.

As an aside, f you've ever seen the 1994 movie Natural Born Killers (the director's cut), you might remember the prison riot near the end.

Sleazeball tabloid TV host Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.) picked up a gun and started blasting away: Guards, prisoners, whoever.  He got so into it, celebrity multiple murder Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) asks him: "Got the feeling?" Gale replied: "I'm alive for the first fucking time!" :)

More seriously, however, Franke's actions would be seen by most journalists as a major breach of journalistic ethics. You're supposed to be there as an observer, not a participant.

If Franke was really referring to his "tour of duty" and "comrades-in-arms," it sounds like he was suffering from a major case of Stockhom Syndrome.