A quel punto tenta l’avventura col fotogiornalismo, e all’inizio è piuttosto spaesato, ma possiede comunque un approccio alla guerra che è pressoché unico, un modo di sentirla viverla e parteciparla che lo fa presto emergere tra gli altri reporter: My War Gone By is not your father’s front-line reporting. This may just be flat-on-your-belly grittiest coverage to come out of those tormented killing zones thus far.”—John Gamino, The Dallas Morning News

My War Gone By, I Miss It So - drew scanlon dot com Book Review: My War Gone By, I Miss It So - drew scanlon dot com

Usually I expect to be choked up while reading war memoirs. That didn't happen often with Anthony Loyd's My War Gone By, the most gruesome account I have ever read of warfare, despite my prejudice, shared with the author, for the Bosnian side of the conflicts between the former republics of Yugoslavia. Why would someone voluntarily place himself in a situation that is known to put life and sanity at great risk? As Loyd relates, After the fall of the Soviet Union, the communist state of Yugoslavia fractured into separate entities including Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bosnia itself has long been composed of a multiethnic population of Serbs (Orthodox Christian), Croats (Catholic), and Bosniaks (Muslim). After an attempt by the Serbian faction of Bosnia’s multiethnic parliament to remain a part of Serbia, the rest of the Bosnian government, with the blessing of the international community, declared independence. Loyd’s rebellious irritation and visceral response to the atrocities around him give uncommon immediacy to this thoughtful, unpretentious memoir of the war in Bosnia.”— San Francisco Examiner When starting this book, the big reminder to keep in mind is Loyd has an addictive personality. Raised in an affluent family, he had the means to take on whatever new addiction crossed his path. He discusses his drug addictions that started when he was in school and obsession with the military thanks in part to a family who boasted and romanticized a long history of war participation. Naturally, he joined the army and was in the Persian Gulf and Northern Ireland. However, it was not enough. He wanted to see war. Drugs and depression followed and when they lifted, the war in Bosnia was beginning.The cruelty and chaos of the conflict both appalled and embraced him; the adrenalin lure of the action perhaps the loudest siren call of all. In the midst of the daily life-and-death struggle among Bosnia’s Serbs, Croats and Muslims, he was inspired by the extraordinary human fortitude he discovered. But returning home he found the void of peacetime too painful to bear, and so began a longstanding personal battle with drug abuse. It turns out that Loyd has demons of his own to deal with that have him regularly getting high on heroin. The result is a doubly riveting tale of the harm men do to each other and the harm one man does to himself. With Loyd's powerful prose, this work takes the reader as close to personal experience as is possible at one remove. In the short span of this war which I’m sure felt very long to the residents over 100,000 people (some reports as high as 250,000) are killed, 20,000 to 50,000 women are raped, and 2.2 million people are displaced. Villages were torn apart, no one was allowed to be neutral. Sometime your name determined the army you would be forced to fight for. ”Many people found themselves carrying a gun whether they liked it or not. If you were of combat age, meaning only that you possessed the strength to fight, kill and possibly survive, then you were conscripted into whichever army represented your denomination, Muslim, Serb or Croat.” If Lloyd had been a damaged soul before going to the Balkans, he was a burned out husk by the time he left. “Everything I had seen and experienced confirmed my views about the pointlessness of existence, the basic brutality of human life and the godlessness of the universe.” Even the presence of UN “peacekeepers” was part of the farce, their leaders apparently chosen from the ranks of the least capable and least imaginative, “He was one of those officers who had risen to a position of authority without ever having the confidence to know when to abandon the book.”

My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd | Goodreads My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd | Goodreads

My War Gone By, I Miss It So, is a book based on his experiences in Bosnia and Chechnya. In the book Loyd staggers chapters about war in Bosnia, Chechnya, and boredom tinged with heroin addiction in London.

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For all these reasons, this is not your average war memorial. It's a much more disturbing experience, one that stirs up quite a few perplexities as to the role played by war correspondents, cameramen, photojournalists, and all sorts of willing witnesses to mankind's tragedies: Guerra e roba. Spero sempre che l’una o l’altra mi mostrino la strada, ma non si verifica mai. Pensi di aver toccato il fondo molte volte e invece scopri sempre qualcos’altro da perdere. E dopo un po’ ti accorgi che quello che un tempo ti sembrava il fondo è ora un’altitudine verso la quale stai arrancando.

My war gone by I miss it so : Loyd, Anthony : Free Download My war gone by I miss it so : Loyd, Anthony : Free Download

As with heroin, Loyd becomes addicted to war; the rush of combat, the thrill of cheating death, the clear-headed conviction of doing something that matters. In some ways it’s relatable and inspiring. In others, it’s insane, selfish, and exploitative. The hypocrisy of his actions is not lost on Loyd, and reading him grapple with it is illuminating, especially as it pertains to the modern media. The next most important theme is cynicism. The only thing you could be sure of is that the “truth” whatever that meant, was not what you would hear from official sources. “All participants lie in war. It is natural. Some often, some all the time: UN spokesmen, Croats, Serbs, Muslims, the lot. Truth is a weapon more than a casualty. Used to persuade people of one thing or another, it becomes propaganda. The more authoritative a figure, the bigger the lies; the more credible his position, the better the lies.” Intertwined with war, there is an autobiography of Loyd. This too is often horrific as he portrays his life growing up and as a heroin addict. The problem is that the two stories portray the same man, addicted to heroin and addicted to war. This is definitely not a book for everybody, but it did satisfy my goal of filling a hole in my historical knowledge, one I’m sure many others have. The lessons learned are important, though sadly not unique. That this happened in my lifetime is sobering evidence that it can easily happen again. Hopefully, with more books like this, that chance will diminish. Sarajevo, inverno 1992-1993: il giornalista olandese Robert Dulmers presso la tomba di Hakija Turajlić nella moschea Ali Pasha.Williams, Martin (14 May 2014). "Times journalists escape after kidnapping in northern Syria". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 19 November 2019.

My War Gone By, I Miss It So - IMDb My War Gone By, I Miss It So - IMDb

for arming and training the Muslims. I believed something fundamental was at stake.'' His disgust at the West's (the United Nations', the world's) inaction was not dispelled by the bombing thatto give anyone, ''including war crimes investigators, the first clue to where he had gone.'' Extreme violence came to seem so normal that when Loyd, living in central Bosnia in 1994, got a dog, and the He’s a bright, articulate, passionate and at times darkly funny man. If this all sounds a bit grim and bleak – it is – but he writes with a rare and startling honestly which makes it eminently readable. As fubar as it seems, this is where Ant needs to be – this is the home he’s chosen and he’s in his element. This book is essentially a memoir, so what we get is the author's experience during the war years, which consists of staggering atrocities and brutality, mediations on fear and war, and the chronicle of a heroin addiction.