lose its (one\'s) limbs

08:41 Dec 6, 2016 

I see the metaphor like the movie "Johnny got his gun": the war still pretends to exist, but it has lost one by one its abilities to move, to progress.
Just like a fire that has only hot ashes remaining, there is still somthing but the fate is certain: there will be no more any move nor any progress.
A wound can be healed, losing a limb cannot, this is also part of the metaphor: only remains the idea or the thought of war, but it can no more act on anything.

05:10 Dec 5, 2016 

Thank you for your input, Charles, read your links attentively.

10:50 Dec 4, 2016 

I have a feeling that this obviously metaphorical use of amputation applied to the war itself, which was reduced to impotence and immobility, stalemate (an unwinnable war), alludes to the theme of amputation in the war itself. Gallagy has reminded us of Col. Kurtz's reference to the Viet Cong chopping off arms. John Kerry, later presidential candidate and Secretary of State, testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on behalf of Vietman Veterans Against the War, in 1971, well before the fall of Saigon, about Americans chopping off people's heads, ears and limbs in South Vietnam:
https://books.google.es/books?id=zFSxsUBrWBYC&pg=PA111

The rate of amputation was much higher than in any previous war. The following refers to American servicemen:

"Amputation or crippling wounds to the lower extremities were 300% higher than in WWII and 70% higher than Korea. Multiple amputations occurred at the rate of 18.4% compared to 5.7% in WWII."
http://history-world.org/vietnam_war_statistics.htm

But of course the rates among Vietnamese civilians were horrific, largely due to unexploded ordnance (UXO) from prolific American bombing.

07:51 Dec 4, 2016 

Thank und danke you for your input, Björn! Sergey (though they put into my foreign passport Sergei :)

22:04 Dec 3, 2016 

Here's an excerpt from the book, including the sentence in question (also @Sergei, although I'm not sure whether you prefer an -i or -y at the end of your name):
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/books/excerpt-from-the-...

"The month in question was April, the cruelest month. It was the month in which a war that had run on for a very long time would lose its limbs, as is the way of wars. It was a month that meant everything to all the people in our small part of the world and nothing to most people in the rest of the world. It was a month that was both an end of a war and the beginning of . . . well, 'peace' is not the right word, is it, my dear Commandant? It was a month when I awaited the end behind the walls of a villa where I had lived for the previous five years, the villa's walls glittering with broken brown glass and crowned with rusted barbed wire."

So basically Gallagy is right, I think. Whether or not this is alluding to a certain practice of chopping off arms, losing all your limbs means quite literally you can no longer move.

21:49 Dec 3, 2016 

Thank you for your interesting explanations, Tony M, they brought me closer to understanding

20:22 Dec 3, 2016 

...as they're talking about "a war that had run on for a very long time", they are picking up on the notion of (physically) run, and then by suggesting the loss of limbs, seeking to imply that the war was no longer "getting anywhere" — possibly literally, in terms of ground gained or lost; or simply in a more figurative way that it was a sort of stalemate...