Whistles from the Graveyard

My Time Behind the Camera on War, Rage, and Restless Youth in Afghanistan

By: Miles Lagoze

Narrated by: Miles Lagoze

“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 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.

Heavy

Hard to hear, but couldn’t stop listening. Eye opening. War is horrible and praying for peace for all those who’ve had to live it!

Chaotic and Clear all at once

Listening to Miles himself read this in his mostly flat tone of voice made me feel like I was in his head briefly, which was chaotic and unnerving. The self loathing is palpable. Miles reminds me of several veteran friends of mine in the way he recounts some of these stories. He probably wouldn’t want this reaction, but I genuinely feel for him. Even though I’ve never been to war, it’s clear to me this is as real a perspective as it gets. I’d recommend this book to anyone wanting a raw look at the debacle of US invlovement in Afghanistan.