The body of one who had weighed some 200 lbs. before he was captured weighed only thirty lbs. when buried, and that included the weight of the coffin. In another example of life’s randomness, the only prisoner to survive was one who had been beaten so badly that he could not walk. Loyd wonders what to say to the parents of these mere children, barely 21 years old. Ordinary items became instruments of death. The U.N. insisted that all Coke cans be squashed because both sides would use them to create grenades. Television sets were gutted and filled with explosives. Anthony Loyd’s family idolized their war heroes. He grew up hearing about their exploits in particular one great grandfather who was a hero of several wars. A man that basically signed up for any war he could and whichever side took him first was the one he fought for. He was bemedalled and bejewelled with war wounds and veneration. We love our war heroes even if there is this underlying hum of death and destruction resonating in some of their souls. Ultimately...they aren’t supposed to like it. Anthony or Ant as he is called by his friends is estranged from his father. His sister is anorexic. He is beginning a long, loving relationship with drug use. He decides his life is going nowhere so in the tradition of his ancestors he goes and finds a war. Loyd covers all the details of the countryside, the hamlets and the towns he visits with scenes of recent slaughter all around from a civil war that in one case has enemies commiserating in a short truce arranged to gather the dead. Muslims and Christians speaking the same language ask each other about the fate of fellow schoolmates they had shared classes with in years past, only to separate for renewed battle. of his neighbors (why else, after all, is he there?), he finds himself unable to photograph her. Within a few months, though, having inherited a wounded correspondent's job, Loyd is recording the carnage around him My favorite books to read are those on subjects I know nothing about. Having no prior knowledge makes every revelation profound, every fact a surprise.

My War Gone by, I Miss it So by Anthony Loyd | Waterstones

Loyd found ISIL bride Shamima Begum in the Al-Hawl camp in Northern Syria. After finding Begum, Loyd taped an interview with her where she stated she had no regrets about moving to ISIL-Controlled territory. [5] Author [ edit ]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.”

My War Gone By, I Miss It So | Grove Atlantic My War Gone By, I Miss It So | Grove Atlantic

Drugs are cheap and readily available in a war zone. Anthony soon develops a heroin addiction. In fact he writes rather lovingly about it.

Who stars in My War Gone By, I Miss It So: Cast List

and -- hey, just trying to get history's first draft straight -- journalists. When Anthony Loyd, a young Englishman, went to Sarajevo in 1993, he was not yet a journalist, or a writer of any type. He was a disappointed This is a relatively interesting and disturbing account of one man's experience reporting on the Bosnian war. I'm sure there are much better and more comprehensive accounts of this war out there, so I wouldn't choose this one out of a lineup.

My War Gone By, I Miss It So - Anthony Loyd - Google Books

While reporting in Northern Syria (2014), he was shot twice in the leg by Syrian rebels to stop him running away. [9] Great-grandfather [ edit ] For the "gun and gear guys it is a let down, but for telling the effects of combat and man's inhumanity to man, it is startling.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: 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. First of all, this book is hugely informative. It sheds light on a historical and human tragedy whose details are still largely unknown, no matter how massive the media coverage was at the time; and it does so from a perspective I can't quite define, between smugly egotistic and rationally detached. In short, a unique voice in the chorus of talk-show mourners and fundraising hyenas we're so familiar with nowadays. The heroin addict bit doesn't really add to the story, but it probably couldn't have been cut out without affecting the truth of the rest of the work -- if this were fiction, it would definitely be a messy subplot that should be cut out just to streamline the book. Likewise, his relationship to his father is just kind of there, butting into the atrocities.