'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

Know Thine Enemy

Fighting's not for me, but conflict takes on many forms, and I've yet to meet the person who can truthfully say that they have always legged it.

It is therefore best to know the nature of the beast, to know the taste of its saliva, without mercifully having a taste for it. 

The practical pacifist needs a guide of rare insight and honesty to have any chance of mapping these delinquent areas. In a nutshell, someone who somehow can find the words to say what war is. 

Such a person is Anthony Loyd and such a book is 'Another Bloody Love Letter'.

When we talk about Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq, what are we talking about? What do we really know? Mr. Loyd also talks about a war with drugs, something that some of us might be more familiar with.

War stories, fictional or otherwise - and this is very much ‘otherwise’ – tend to make you think of the terse, tight-lipped dialogue of Andy Macknab, or the action-packed ‘Blackhawk Down’.

Another Bloody Love Letter, has it’s moments of toughness and explosive action, but it’s strength lies in it’s portrayal of the participants (willing or not) themselves, and thereby its portrait of the author, an all too human figure, scared of heights, and after almost twenty years in and out of a multitude of war zones, still sane enough to duck when there is an explosion.

It is Anthony Loyd’s own vulnerability, his overwhelming sense of grief (and sometimes lack of it) that makes this book so special. It is his unreal transition from the western world to the world of modern warfare that wipes his drug slate clean and makes him more a person than a hero.   

If you read this book, you will clearly see the dog of war for what he is; a definite advantage. 

Send your opinions regarding Mr. Benedict's writings to bbenedict@netlistings.com