Loyd gradually reveals a fractured upbringing, which culminated in the death of the father from whom he had been torturously distant for many years.

But nothing here compares to the stories Tobias Wolff tells in his Vietnam memoir, In Pharaoh's Army, which distill the whole war into a few pages. Anthony Loyd’s My War Gone By, I Miss It So is part autobiography and part war correspondent memoir.

At 26, he decided to travel into Bosnia for a peek into the brutality of war and see its terrifyingly seductive power for himself. The hype machine has compared My War Gone By to Michael Herr's masterpiece, Dispatches, but Loyd's book is devoid of Herr's vivid prose, his wacko humor and his wild, deep love for the American grunts he hung with in Vietnam. Loyd manages to get on the inside and look out, and so provides a perspective on hatred, cruelty and human depravity that is sobering and terrifying. We had met in the city’s one remaining nightclub, the BB, a sweltering basement venue that afforded an outlet for easy pick-ups among Sarajevo’s youth as the war stoked desire with one hand while unbuttoning restraint with the other.

The bodies had been looted and ID cards were scattered all over; sometimes the faces were almost unrecognizable as war changed them. Mike credits his early military training as the one thing that kept him disciplined through the many years.It was as if small dust devils of energy would ripple one group or another into action, something close to a hysteria of juddering gun barrels, feverish concentration and tensed muscle, followed by an almost post-coital backwash when a firer would slide behind the cover of a wall, head lolling slightly, sometimes uttering an unnatural peal of relieved laughter, near to a giggle, to anyone who made glittering eye contact. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy. Anybody else feel a little queasy, like watching two teenagers playing video games only we are talking about human life. Although he does once brave enemy lines to save some wounded children (and even saves a cow in the process), he's ultimately just a tourist. It was there--in the midst of the roar of battle and the life-and-death struggle among the Serbs, Croatians, and Bosnian Muslims--that he would discover humanity at its worst and best.

Born to a distinguished family steeped in military tradition, raised on stories of wartime and ancestral heroes, Anthony Loyd longed to experience war from the front lines - so he left England at the age of twenty-six to document the conflict in Bosnia.Until I read Antony Loyd's book I had never quite understood the pull or power of that Balkan experience. There are a few revealing anecdotes: How an American peacekeeper was so spooked by a Bosnian killing field war-crimes investigators were exploring that he wouldn't patrol it at night.