‘‘The Blog of War” is a battle cry from the blogosphere, a compendium of dispatches from the front lines in the war on terrorism, describing how computer, blackberry, cell phone and instant messaging technology have given the man in the trench a new, instantaneous, unfiltered means of communication.

There are three kinds of combat reporting, writes Matthew Currier Burden, a former Army major in the book’s introduction:

‘‘The combat correspondent (embedded with troops or not) reports directly from the area of conflict. Press releases from the Department of Defense highlighting what the DOD wants us to know from the combat zone. And finally, soldiers tell their own story.”

What military bloggers do, he states, is offer ‘‘unfettered access to the War on Terror in their own words. The public does not have to wait weeks or months to hear what’s happened. They don’t have to settle for the government’s approved messages to the public.”

Burden reprints blogs from military journalists, intelligence specialists, medical personnel and grunts, officer and enlisted, to present the viewpoint of the Soldier in the field, whether describing a longing for absent family members, the day-to-day routine of being a Forward Operating Base mayor, or the existential dread of taking live fire.

The blogs capture the profound, the profane and the mundane.

Despite cleaning services provided by a contractor, there’s the Soldier who prefers to wash his own clothes in mountain-fresh Tide and Snuggles dryer sheets to get his clothes smelling ‘‘just like mom used to do,” and an injured woman who sets aside thoughts of disfigurement to joke with her surgeon about the matching underwear she’s wearing underneath a shredded uniform.

Burden provides brief prefaces to individual blogs, describing the blogger and the circumstances under which a piece was written.

Army Staff Sgt. Fred Minnick jokingly describes the security risks associated with a boisterous comrade in the blog ‘‘In Iraq for 365.”

‘‘‘Sammy, one of these day Haji’s going to hear your damn laugh and hit us with mortars.’ And just a split second after this sentence was completed, I kid you not (I swear this really happened) we heard whistling and saw flashes. Bullets were whizzing by our heads.”

At a vehicle checkpoint in Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division, Sgt. Michael Durand of the Army National Guard anxiously wonders why Iraqis disregard the posted warnings at checkpoints.

‘‘What the [expletive]! Are these people born stupid? It must be something in the water, food or air. Two [expletive] years we have been here. Two [expletive] years and they don’t get it. We have [expletive] signs on our trucks saying ‘stay back or we’ll shoot your ass’ but they just don’t get it. It’s like ... it’s like dealing with retards. [Expletive]!

‘‘‘They know,’ the interpreter put in, ‘that the Americans, they sometimes make exceptions.’

‘‘Oh great. So now our weakness, our lack of resolve, is being used against us. It’s bad enough that we have to fill out reams of paperwork on every warning shot we fire. And that’s if you get fried by your own chain of command. You get in more trouble here if you kill a bad guy than you would if you killed an American. Bullshit.”

In a somber moment, Durand contemplates nonmetaphorical canines scavenging the field.

‘‘With the trucks and guns positioned, engines were shut off and we settled in to wait and watch. Night dogs began to creep out of the shadows, closing in on us, sniffing the air for food or danger or weakness.

‘‘I watched them when I wasn’t watching everything else, noting which windows stayed lit and which turned out. The people inside returning to bed or continuing to watch us from the dark.

‘‘The dogs came in much closer than they ever had done before, nose to the ground and eyes never leaving us. Always tracking our movements.

‘‘I like the dogs. I respect their ability to survive, their skill. Somehow I feel safer when they’re around. I watch them for clues and danger signals. They are neither for us nor against us. I know they wouldn’t hesitate to take one of us down if they [sic] smelt fear or weakness. They just are. They were here before me and they will be here long after I am gone. Somehow that thought comforts me.”

There’s a scintillating immediacy to the cyberspace postings in ‘‘The Blog of War,” where correspondents rant, vent and confess, sometimes producing poetry in the process. These are primal screams of a sort; I blog, therefore I am.