War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War Book

Though written in a previous era, I feel that this book belongs on the shelf next to Shake Hands with the Devil, Emma's War, Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, and My War Gone By I Miss It So. Neugass in the 1930's shares so much with those real-life protagonists from '90's humanitarian memoir.

He's not simply the innocent abroad. Idealists have a hard time living up to their own big ideas and we get various shades of Neugass. He doesn't disguise the ugliness, even when it's his own.

I found this to be one of his more interesting, quizzical, and at the same time disturbing paragraphs...

"There seems to be nothing sacred about ambulances, after all. I've been an instinctive pacifist all my life; but I feel that if I catch the man who rolls rocks onto the Mas de las Matas road, I'd like to open him up little by little with my jackknife until I see if I can tell a fascist heart from a democratic heart. It's the actions you kill, not the man. Murder! Think of it."

Face to face with a reality as morally-charged, yet horrific as the Spanish Civil War, one's also bound to be faced with an unseen side of themselves. I still think Anthony Lloyd was right by saying that oftentimes the humanitarian impulse boils down to just wanting "a hit off the action."