Blood, Sweat and Tears: An Irish Soldier’s Story of Love and Loss

Irish troops have served 40,000 individual tours of duty over four decades in Lebanon. All over Ireland, in almost every family, there is a father, a brother, a sister, son, daughter or cousin who has come under fire in South Lebanon. Forty-seven Irish troops died in Lebanon and thousands more have returned with physical and psychological injuries. Blood, Sweat and Tears tells the true story of the Irish at war. Clonan brings the reader on a tour of duty in Lebanon from 1995 to 1996. His vivid account brings you from a rain-swept Dublin Airport on a dark October night to the massacre of 118 innocent men, women and children in the village of Qana, South Lebanon in April 1996. The reader is taken on patrol with the Irish army and shares in their black humour, their fears, frustration and pain. It is through this odyssey that the heartbreaking nature of peacekeeping operations as seen through Irish eyes is laid bare like never before. Blood, Sweat and Tears is above all a story of personal loss, loneliness and the psychological trauma of military service in a time of war. As the narrator comes to terms with the slaughter of innocents around him, he will ultimately be confronted with the loss of those closest to him at home in Ireland. 'Tom Clonan brings to life the sights, sounds, smells and characters of southern Lebanon. His beautifully written book is in turns funny, gripping and heart-breaking.' - Lara Marlowe