Paul Smyth

It is your first day in a top comms role. What do you need? Fashionable-yet-serious attire? Check. BlackBerry? Check. Flak jacket and gun?

Although dealing with journalists can sometimes mean standing in the firing line, there are very few PR roles that actually require protective clothing and arms. But Major Paul Smyth, the media ops centre director for the British Army at Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, regularly finds himself in situations that can genuinely be described as 'life-threatening'. All of which puts a slow email server into perspective.

As Smyth, 38, is based in Helmand Province, PRWeek has to conduct the interview over the phone between operations while Smyth avoids the local Taliban. This makes it difficult to get under his skin, but he could not hide his enthusiasm as he told PRWeek he had just become a CIPR chartered practitioner - one of only 25 in the UK.

Smyth's main role is to chaperone journalists who want to report from the frontline. However, if it is deemed too dangerous, he takes out a combat camera team to gather information and report back on the action.

'We are a window into what goes on out here,' explains Smyth. 'Where we don't have the opportunity of putting journalists on the ground, we need to make sure that people still see what's going on.

'It is a little different from other PR jobs. I carry the same kit as the other soldiers, which includes a gun, because people will be shooting and launching rockets at you. But the team's skills-set enables us to get footage the media sometimes cannot.'

While Smyth is a soldier and deploys with a weapon, his other kit includes a camera, video camera, laptop and portable satellite dish, so he can send out stories and pictures as quickly as possible, without compromising location.

Twitter, Facebook, Flicker and YouTube all feature heavily. 'I use as many means as I can, just as I would if I were at home with a client,' he says. 'Twitter and Facebook are fantastic ways of pushing out information and images that would not otherwise see the light of day.'

Pictures from the frontline are important, he adds, in order for people at home to see what is really going on.

Smyth believes there is an appetite for people in the UK to see what is happening in Afghanistan: 'We are making the most of the fact that a lot of people are interested in what we are doing and the more chance we have of allowing people to see the good work we are doing, the better.'

Paul Smyth is founder of River PR and works as a Major in a Territorial Army role in media operation for the British Army, having served in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to PR Week:

Smyth decided to become a soldier relatively late in his life, after seven years spent in various PR roles in the UK. He recalls that it was a childhood ambition, but it was not until he realised he could transfer the skills he had achieved in his PR career to the Army that he decided to enlist. He has now completed tours in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Despite telling his wife, with whom he has two children, that he 'just needed to get it out of his system', he is still loving the role seven years later: 'In terms of experiences, the things that I'm doing at the moment are once in a lifetime.'

Among his roles Smyth was involved in the British retreat from Basra:

Smyth was heavily involved with the comms planning for the withdrawal of troops in Iraq, which is one of his proudest achievements from his Army career.

'To have the honour of orchestrating events in our British history like that is absolutely amazing. Deep down, although I'm a tiny cog in a massive team here, I am hoping that I'm making a valuable contribution and a bit of difference.'

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• Media Operations Group (V)
• River PR

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Blog:http://helmandblog.blogspot.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/MajorPaulSmyth