THREE YEARS AT WAR
The diary of a cameraman in Afghanistan
By Josh Fortune
DayOne. 224 pages. £8.00
ISBN 978 1 846 253 720
This is the biography of a young man, covering the three years from his departure from the Parachute Regiment due to injury to the end of his activities as a NATO cameraman covering the conflict in Afghanistan.
Josh starts as a Christian who is deeply unhappy with his circumstances and allows this to affect his spiritual life, but who ends the three years as a restored and committed Christian. There is also a delightful romantic strand that runs through the book.
Strengths
Josh is very open about the challenges he experiences in his spiritual walk, and how deeply his relationship with the Lord is affected by his life circumstances. For those interested in the details of life in Afghanistan this book gives an intimate and colourful picture. It will help us to pray for our forces more intelligently, and for Afghanistan as it faces its uncertain future. It also illustrates that parts of the Bible that we struggle with because of military violence have a very real and immediate application to others who live (and die) in different, brutal and violent circumstances. God’s people worldwide experience the full range of the human condition, not just the comfortable liberal-valued Western world part, and the Scriptures in God’s wisdom speak to all these conditions.
Cautions
While Josh no doubt spares us the more horrific details of all that he experienced, this is not a read for the faint of heart and some of the events are distressing. Josh is also quite open about how low his life sank in sin. I don’t mean these comments as criticisms so much as warnings. The earthy and sometimes brutal reality of this book will be appropriate for some, but not for others. In terms of our own congregation I struggled to think who would really find the book useful, instructive and encouraging. I think that it would have a real use for those working with individuals whose lives are in a very open mess, or those thinking of a career in the military or associated services who need to be forewarned about elements of the life they are planning to get involved with.
