My War Gone By, I Miss It So

By: Anthony Loyd

Narrated by: Steven Crossley

With elegance and unsparing honesty, special correspondent for The Times of London, Anthony Loyd records this harrowing account of modern war. My War Gone By, I Miss It So exposes the unspeakable terror, visceral thrill of combat, and countless lives laid waste in Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II. Unsatisfied by a brief stint in the British army and driven by the despair of drug dependence, the author was searching for excitement when he set out for Bosnia in 1993. Nothing prepared him for the brutal life-and-death struggle he discovers there among the Serbs, Croatians, and Bosnian Muslims. As he writes of the shocking chaos, he finds a chilling purpose to his life as a journalist. Anthony Loyd has become an award-winning international reporter whose work is compared to the classics of war literature. With this powerful book, he takes an uncompromising look at the horrifying savagery and seductive power of war. British actor Steven Crossley masterfully conjures up the sights, smells, and sounds of a country being torn apart.

©1999 Anthony Loyd (P)2000 Recorded Books, LLC

3 time reading / listening.

Reality of war. No bias just plain human experience. Anthony has made real historical record of Balkan conflict.

The horror of war.

I was there as part of NATO from 1993-95. Horrifyingly accurate in its account of what happened there.

Fun book. Low anti Serb bias for an Anglo

Serbs were lambasted in the Western media. It was the whabbi Muslim separatists who started the killing. Just like Kosovo, Syria and Burma now. The US flew Saudi jihadists into Bosnia with military transport planes. As Clinton emails say, jihad is a volatile but usefull asset for the west.

The war in the Balkans, 1992-1995

An English journalist experience during the Balkans war in the early and mid 1990s. Also a brief stint in Chechnya. From reading this book, obviously war is hell.

Grim

Was My War Gone By, I Miss It So worth the listening time?

Loyd’s memoir of his time as a war journalist in Bosnia and Chechnya in the 1990”s is an odd mix of war story, addiction tell all, and biography of a troubled upbringing. To Loyd’s credit, he interweaves the three threads in a back and forth timeline that works better than if the whole had been told in a linear fashion. But overall I found this audiobook grim and not terribly enlightening. There is extensive, vivid recounting of battlefield scenes of viscera and horror that loses all shock effect after awhile. Is this supposed to be the true confession of an adrenaline junkie, war fetishist, drug addict or all of the above? In the end, I wasn’t sure. Though Loyd is undoubtedly brave, both in his exploits and in his willingness to bare all on the page, I found myself unable to relate to the person or the plight. For those who want a journalist’s unblemished view of the horrors of war, then this may be the audiobook for you, but it left me cold and frankly, slightly repelled.