Whenever I speak at the United Nations, UNICEF, or elsewhere to raise awareness of the continual and rampant recruitment of children in wars around the world, I come to realize that I still do not fully understand how I could possibly have survived the civil war in my country, Sierra Leone. I need to put in a quote. The book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is an extremely powerful memoir written by Ishmael Beah. It tells the true story of his own experiences as a child soldier during the huge civil war in Sierra Leone. It is seen as a heartbreaking but still eye-opening account of the true horrors of war and the true resilience of the human spirit. Using child soldiers in times of war is used because they are very easy to influence, and it can be …show more content…
The United States military force differs completely from the Sierra Leone military force because of the ages of the soldiers. One of the significant differences lies in the age of the soldiers. In the United States, enlistments in the military typically require individuals to be at least 18 years of age, with some exceptions for certain roles. During the civil war in Sierra Leone, sometimes child soldiers as young as 7 or even 8 years old were forcibly recruited and involved in armed conflict. Ishmael and some of his friends had just arrived at a camp where there were many soldiers there to protect them all. A soldier sees them, fires round into the air to scare them, and takes them behind the building nobody had been behind before. That's when Ishmael sees the rest of the boys back there as well. Ishmael had stated after walking to the back of the house, “There were over thirty boys there, two of whom, Sheku and Josiah, were seven and eleven years