Essay on A Child Soldier's Life

One of these experiences is when he was about to see his family, then the village they were staying in was attacked by rebels. His mother, father and two brothers were trapped in their house and slowly burned to death. This happened only a few weeks after their former home was attacked and raided by rebels. But it is a better fate then some because one of his now deceased, friend’s 3 sisters were raped over and over again. while their father was knocked out for trying to defend them and their mother being forced to watch. The rebels took the girls with them. Ishmael's fate was not much better than the 3 girls for he became a child soldier: traumatized and hopped up on drugs and told to “avenge” his family by killing every rebel and snorting cocaine until he no longer felt anything. Remember war is not all honor and glory, it is suffering, death and pain. In more ways than

There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of these child soldiers  , Ishmael Beah is a child who lived most of his childhood in the war   . He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words according to  http://www.alongwaygone.com/index.html and his memoir “A Long Way Gone”. The war had made ishmael have perseverance  in the long run , inference that he was brainwashed by the war and that ishmael was a very hopeful child always wishing for better days.

I have been a military child for my entire life. I’ve lived in five states on the East Coast, across the Atlantic in England, in the desert of Southern California, and finally, I’m home in Vermont. Moving roughly every two years has been difficult; but, despite this challenge, my “military child” experience has given me many positive advantages. I’ve been exposed to many different cultures, places, and people, and this has broadened my worldview and given me the tools I need to be a successful college student.

Bang! Bang! “At that instant several gunshots, which sounded like thunder striking the tin-roofed houses, took over town. The sound of guns was so terrifying it confused everyone” (Beah 23). In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah conveys his amazing journey through war and hardship as a child soldier. Sierra Leone--a country on the western coast of Africa--was embroiled in a bloody civil war in the 1990’s. Battles multiplied as bloodshed abounded and as a child, Ishmael Beah was forced to survive, find food, and face unimaginable dangers. Running from the battle front was also a routine ordeal. At age 13 Beah was captured by the military and brainwashed into using guns and drugs. As a child soldier, he perpetrated and witnessed a great deal of violence. At 15 he was rescued and taken to a rehabilitation center. With time and continual treatment, Beah was able to recover, to some extent, and reconnect with his Uncle Tommy, who adopted him. He was later chosen to speak to the United Nations in New York City about his experiences as a child soldier. When he returned to Sierra Leone, war broke out throughout the city where he lived, causing many deaths including his Uncle Tommy. Eventually Beah escaped Sierra Leone and managed to reach New York City, where he began a new life. Through the book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah conveys a central theme of having to survive, at a young age, through the hardships of war with the use of imagery.

When Ishmael came to the States, he started raising awareness on the issue of child soldiers. He has spoken all over the world on behalf of UNICEF, the Council on Foreign Relations, and more. He speaks about what child soldiers go through, and why an end needs to be brought to the use of child soldiers. At a marine base in Virginia he spoke with the soldiers on what to do if they encountered a child while in combat. He will continue to inform people on this topic because most people are unaware that it is happening. Ishmael hopes that by raising awareness people can fight

At first they are children therefore naïve and scared of war. So it becomes a constant process of changing their emotions. Ishmael says “When the soldier stood in front of me, I avoided eye contact, so he straightened my head until my eyes met his. He gave me the gun. I held it in my trembling hands. He then added the magazine, and I shook even more” (109). The war leaders know this so they begin convincing them this is their war by depicting the enemy as the cause of the pain. Lieutenant says to them “‘some of you are here because they have killed your parents or families, others because this is a safe place to be … we need the help of able boys and men to fight these rebels ‘“(106). The kids now feel helpless since they are faced with the ultimatum of either leaving with no rations or fighting for the cause. All things considered they have no choice but to join this war. Now that they have agreed they had to ensure they detested enemies and felt nothing when killing. Lieutenant said “’ they have lost everything that makes them human, they do not deserve to live. That is why we must kill every single one of them…’” (108). ironically, that quote is essentially what the soldiers are doing to the kids verbalized. After a while the army breaks the children and they have lost all of their innocence and all that is left is war hardened. Beah says “I could become angry, yes, begin to visualize

A prominent theme in A Long Way Gone is about the loss of innocence from the involvement in the war. A Long Way Gone is the memoir of a young boy, Ishmael Beah, wanders in Sierra Leone who struggles for survival. Hoping to survive, he ended up raiding villages from the rebels and killing everyone. One theme in A long Way Gone is that war give innocent people the lust for revenge, destroys childhood and war became part of their daily life.

Political strife has been always present on an international scale with surges of civil war due to government overthrow, sending nations into unrest. Although not common recently, the ideology of recruiting child soldiers still remains, and the lasting effects on the children are traumatizing. From witnessing the carnage of constant bombshells erupting in the distance to whole families being executed, the images are etched deep into their minds, haunting them even after they are discharged from the armies. Although putting an immediate end to child soldiers is unrealistic, the United States should aid in creating and training members of war-affected countries to run long-lasting Rehabilitation centers due to the unqualified and ineffective

106-107). One of the other boys response to the ultimatum was “It is better to stay here for now. We had no choice. Leaving the village was as good as being dead” (p. 107). The lieutenant’s weapon was instilling them with fear and telling them that the only way you could stay alive was if you joined their forces. Of course, the men and young boys complied with the lieutenant because their first thoughts were this is life or death. What Ishmael did not know when he was a child soldier was he was being drugged. Before going to war, they would give them white tablets to boost their energy. The boys free time consisted of “...smoking marijuana and sniffing brown brown, cocaine mixed with gunpowder, which was always spread out on the table, and of course taking more of the white capsules, as I had become addicted to them” (p. 121). First of all, a 13 year old boy should not be smoking marijuana, sniffing brown brown,and cocaine mixed with gunpowder. Those drugs are lethal and he could have been killed by

Have you ever wondered what the life of a child soldier is like? Well, if you have, then the story of Ishmael Beah may be of interest to you. Ishmael Beah’s story is one of hope and of humanity and how if given a chance any child who has experienced being a child soldier can eventually regain their humanity and live a normal life again. In this essay I will be telling you how Ishmael is able to regain his humanity after being a child soldier. Now, I will be talking to you today about what happened when Ishmael became a child soldier.

Much like Sierra Leone, Ishmael is war torn over the two sides of himself, the child and the soldier in him. This is evident in the lines, “I distanced myself from the games in the village and sat behind the houses staring into open space until my migraine subsided” and “I could become angry, yes, begin to visualize scenarios of shooting or stabbing a rebel.” These describe Ishmael’s confliction within himself of being a child and being a soldier. It was near the end when Ishmael’s war was finally won. This is evident in the line, “The war memories had formed a barrier that I had to break in order to think about any moment before the war.” This line shows Ishmael realizing how to learn to be a child again. Therefore, the loss of his home, his country and his childhood had formed Ishmeal into the person he is

Child soldiers are not always responsible for their actions. These children are often forced to fight and have little choice whether they are enlisted or not. These children had no choice but to kill other wise they would be killed themselves. Ishmael Beah was one of these child soldiers who had no choice but to go fight or die if they had left. They had lost their families and had nowhere to go. This was because they had killed their families and everyone living in their village. Overall, it becomes clear that these children were treated unfairly and were victims.

Military children are in a league of their own, and at very young ages are thrown into situations of great stress. Approximately 1.2 million children live in the U.S. Military families (Kelly. 2003) and at least 700,000 of them have had at least one parent deployed (Johnson et al. 2007). Every child handles a deployment differently, some may regress in potty training, and others may become extremely aggressive. Many different things can happen, in most cases when a parent deploys and the child becomes difficult to handle, it can cause a massive amount of stress on the parent that is not deployed as well as added stress on the parent who is deployed. There are three stages of a deployment, pre-deployment, deployment, and reintegration,

We Were Soldiers Once and Young is a history book written by LT. GEN. Harold G. Moore (RET.) and Joseph L. Galloway. The history book is based on the Vietnam War, which took place in 1965. The Battle of Ia Drang was said that it was the battle that changed the war in Vietnam. The book is a tribute to all the soldiers in the war and for their great braveness, love, and care for one another. It was a bloody war, but very inspiring to read about the courageous soldiers who put their lives on the line for the United States of America.

Children recruited into the armed forces in these countries are forced by their commanders to commit atrocities against other soldiers and villagers. They may also suffer through punishments themselves. Commanders have been known to force their child recruits to witness and/or commit abuses against their own families or captured prisoners (“Coercion and Intimidation of Child Soldiers to Participate in Violence” 1). For instance, child soldiers recruited into Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army have been forced to tie their parents to trees and club them to death or be killed themselves (Taylor 1). Physical