Whistles from the graveyard : my time behind the camera on war, rage, and restless youth in Afghanistan / Miles Lagoze,
Edition:
First One Signal Publishers/Atria Books hardcover edition.
Publisher:
One Signal PublishersAtria
Copyright Date:
2023
Description:
xxi, 246 pages ; 24 cm
Notes:
Includes index.
Contents:
I am not who I say I am -- Laughter (or) mirth -- The schoolhouse -- Sad bois in paradise -- Standard operating procedures -- One shot -- The four locos -- Theater of war -- "Nuther day, man...nuther day" -- Observer's paradox -- Erasing the river -- Keep me safe -- Scratching for a niche -- Freedom in bliss -- Learned it from them -- Epilogue.
Summary:
"For readers of Jarhead and Phil Klay, a Marine Combat Cameraman offers a character-rich, unfiltered look at military life in Afghanistan, from a Millennial perspective of soldiers raised with modern media and graphic video games"-- Provided by publisher. At just eighteen years old, Miles Lagoze joined the Marine Corps a decade after the war began and found himself surrounded by people not unlike those he'd left behind at home--aimless youth searching for stability, community, and economic security. Deployed to Afghanistan as a Combat Cameraman--an active-duty videographer and photographer--Lagoze produced slick images of glory and heroism for public consumption. But his government-approved footage concealed a grim reality. Here, Lagoze pulls back the curtain and illustrates the grisly truth of the longest war in American history. As these young men and women were deployed to an unfamiliar country half a world away--history's "graveyard of empires"--they carried the scars of the fractured homeland that sent them. Lagoze shows us Marines straddling the edge of chaos. We see forces desensitized to gore and suffering by the darkest reaches of the internet, unsure of their places in an unraveling world and set further adrift by the uncertain mission to which they had been assigned abroad. Whistles from the Graveyard shows the parts of the Afghanistan War we were never meant to see--Afghan locals and American infantry drawn together by their fears of the ghostly, ever-present terror of the Taliban; moments of dark resignation as the devastating toll of years in war's crossfire reveals itself between bouts of adrenaline-laced violence; and nights of reckless, drug-fueled abandon to dull the pain. In full, vivid color, Miles Lagoze shows us an oft-overlooked generation of young Americans we cast out into the desert, steeped in nihilism, and shipped back home with firsthand training in extremism, misanthropy, and insurrection.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.