My War Gone By, I Miss It So

This is probably the best written book documenting a war that I have read, not because of research or completeness in the story, but the writing itself was just that good. The book is the personal account written by a bored young man that decides that maybe being a war photographer will bring some excitement to his life. This said he goes off to the Bosnian war during the early to mid 1990's. The author does not skip any of the brutality that made up this war, he talks about the war crimes committed, the death and destruction that takes place in normal combat, firefights and getting shelled, and the toll all of this takes on him and his peers. The author makes a point that he was not just another war correspondent, but an ex soldier that was more of a war junkie or thrill seeker then journalist. He also describes how he did not cover the war like most other journalists; he went right into the battles with troops from either side. He does not think much of the company journalists that only ventured out of their hotel rooms to get the latest update from the UN headquarters. He also states that for himself it was impossible to remain objective with some much pain and evil going on around him. The real power of the book comes from the author's ability to describe the incredible amount of human cruelty and suffering in the Bosnian war. He really makes you understand what war crimes and ethnic cleansing are all about, not just words but people that have the worst other humans can think up perpetrated against them. The book does not detail out why the war was taking place nor the world politics that were going on at the time, but that is not its focus. It is a very good account of the war through his eyes and if you are interested in the war at all, this should be one of the books you read.

I chose this book with the goal of comprehending the conflict in the Balkans. Loyd is an excellent writer with an eye for detail and a gift to deliver the big picture. After finishing the book, I feel that I have a much better understanding of the events, and I am horrified. Some reviews comment on the lack of pictures (odd indeed for a photo journalist), but I'm personally thankful to have been spared an eyeful of the atrocities, tragedies and pain lobbied back and forth between these factions. More than a journalist, Loyd is a writer and an adventurer, and this is his trip. Don't expect a straight forward history of the Balkans, it comes in doses, the story keeps a general chronological order, but there is temporal incongruence. It didn't bother me in the least. Also, this is Loyd's story. He intersperses accounts of his life in England, his distant father, his heroin habit. If anything, view these as extras. This is a brilliant account of the situation in the Balkans (with a terrifying chapter on Chechnya towards the end) and the author's personal vignettes should be savored and considered as a means to better understand the kind of man who day trips into other people's nightmares.

Upon first picking up Anthony Loyd's "My War Gone By" and seeing the blurbs on the jacket, I was impressed with the comparisons to Herr's "Dispatches." Upon reading the book though, it seems more similar to another book about the Vietnam war, Tim O'Brien's novel "Going After C," albeit in a nearly antithetical fashion. O'Brien writes about a fighter who walks, in a dream, from his meaningless jungle war to civilized Paris. Loyd writes about a dreamer who walks into a fight and from London into a war that ten years ago was a suprise to most of us. And Loyd writes about that war with direct, vibrant, unflinching prose, tying in his own descent into addiction as an allegory for the loss of such a beautiful landscape and people on the European continent into the darkness and insanity of a pointless war. Also, the feeling of a "war tourist," which Loyd refers to frequently are on point. In 1992, I stayed with a friend of Zagreb, Croatia, at a time when the "front" was about fifty kilometers from the capital city. Although I never actually went to the front, largely because my friend told me it was usually "boring," I always harbored the guilt that my visit was simpily an attempt to vicariously experience their war, as we drank in the cafes and partied in the clubs and homes of young Croatians, amoung those some who had simply walked away from the fighting. At that time, I heard many of the Croats complaining of atrocities by the Serbs similar to those Loyd describes committed against the Muslims. And they wanted to know why the UN and Americans (I seemed to be the only one around at that time) had not intervened. Perhaps, Loyd's book with its brutal honesty will be a wake-up call for real police action in the Balkans, as the real atrocities there are not being committed by any one ethnic group or side in this war, but by common criminals hiding beyond those ethnic banners, cousins to Loyd's warlord in camos, pink shirt and bedroom slippers.

The darkness surrounding Anthony Loyd so overwhelmed me I could feel and smell his War. From The Red Badge to Dispatches, this is the best report I have ever read.The digressions with his father at first altered the tempo. As the addiction and the pain intertwined, I almost turned ahead to view his next aside.I have often worried about "missing" a war. Now, I don't have to worry. Anthony Loyd did it for me. The confusion and uncertainty make this an unforgettable book. The betrayals and absence of triumph are rending. I am sorry he had to go through this; not as sorry as I am for those innocents still in Hell.

This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. It reminds me of the Vietnam era classics "A Rumor of War" and "Dispatches." The vivid accounts of the Bosnian Wars shames me as it should any citizen of a NATO country. How such horrific acts were allowed to occur within a few minutes planes ride from the most powerful military alliance in history is totally unforgivable. I don't believe the US should be the world's policeman, and in truth at the time I opposed sending American troops to Bosnia. But after such a vivid account of the horror, betrayal, and sheer hopelessness of the lives of those in the former Yugoslavia during the early 90's shames me more than I can say. All this was allowed by western cowardice. It seems our experience in Vietnam has yet to claim it's last victims.