Whistles from the Graveyard: My Time Behind the Camera on War, Rage, and Restless Youth in Afghanistan

(Hardback)

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The most bracingly honest, refreshing account of the Afghan war (Sebastian Junger, New York Times bestselling author) from a Marine Corps Combat Cameraman and director of the acclaimed documentary Combat Obscura.

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 hed left behind at homeaimless youth searching for stability, community, and economic security.

Deployed to Afghanistan as a Combat Cameramanan active-duty videographer and photographerLagoze 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 awayhistorys graveyard of empiresthey 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 seeAfghan 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 wars 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.

Reviews

"This may be the most bracingly honest, refreshing account of the Afghan war that I've ever read."
Sebastian Junger,New York TimesBestselling author ofWarandTribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
"The Marine Corps is a weird place and when you go to war everything only gets weirder. You see beauty and horror, tragedy and joy, savagery and kindness. In short, its a mess; and it takes a camera obscura to capture it all. Miles Lagoze did this in his groundbreaking film and hes going to do it again in his memoir."
Elliot Ackerman, National Book Award Finalist and author ofPlaces and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning
If the military is a microcosm of our country, Miles Lagoze's book is a warning for our society--an indictment of not just our greedy war machine but of the culture that ignores and even supports it. Lagoze turns on a night vision camera in a dark corner and instead of scattering, the roaches flock and perform, reveal their true selves. Shelve it aside Michael Herr'sDispatchesand Evan Wright'sGeneration Kill."
Matt Young, author ofEat the Apple


"Whistles From the Graveyard hits, immediate and ruthless. An important and courageous record of a catastrophic time."Sean T. Conroe, author ofFuccboi: A Novel
Praise for Miles Lagoze'sCombat Obscura

An eye-opening dispatch from a conflict mired in confusion. The New York Times

The camera documents reality as it simultaneously creates a version of it a mix of therapy, confessional, and a mirror held up to young, grime-streaked faces. The Washington Post

A warts-and-all approach at in-the-trenches behavior and misbehavior. The Hollywood Reporter

An unexpurgated making of of the Afghan Campaign. This remarkable film comes across as wars backstage story its about the stuff they leave out of the official coverage.Film Comment

So raw the Corps doesnt want you to see it. One of the most genuine looks at what the Forever War was like for those who waged it. Task & Purpose

Depicts the war beneath the narratives, capturing the soldiers experience with an immediacy that explodes political abstraction, placing it in a more humanist context. Newsweek

A filmmaking masterpiece The films true brilliance lies in its situational hysteria, a scene-by-scene unpredictability that serves as a microcosm of a war with no end and no definitive outcome in sight. Military Times

Detonates any lingering fantasies of military heroism. AV Club

Author Bio

MilesLagozeis the critically acclaimed director of the 2019 documentaryCombat Obscura. The footage used in the documentary was obtained whenLagozeenlisted as an eighteen-year-old Combat Camera in the Marines and deployed to Afghanistan in 2011. Hiswritinghas been published byThe Paris ReviewandRealClearPolitics.Whistles from the Graveyard is his first book.