A Long Way Gone summary

The author’s experience was unfortunately not unique. While people all over Sierra Leone suffered, children were hit the hardest by the chaos and violence of the civil war.

Since the war began so suddenly, it was common for children to be separated from their families during attacks in towns and villages and left to fend for themselves. There were also few ways to reach separated family members, as cellphone networks weren’t yet available in the early 1990s.

While the horrors of war were especially difficult for children, young boys had a particularly hard time of it. Not only did rebel groups target them, but also civilians saw them as a threat.

But how could village populations see harmless local boys as dangerous?

You can just imagine the terrible things that rebels forced child soldiers to do. Yet even the national army fighting the rebels engaged in cruel tactics. In fact, if the army demanded it of them, young boys had no choice but to fight.

After some time on the road, the author and his friends were captured by the army, which took them to a military base in Yele. The early days there were peaceful, as the boys enjoyed some of the comforts of a normal life, like regular food and rest.

It’s difficult to imagine a 13-year-old boy doing the work of a soldier. That is, until you hear how the army brainwashed young recruits into becoming efficient killing machines.

The first tactic was to distort a boy’s reality by pumping him full of drugs.

Any war veteran can tell you that returning home from war doesn’t mean the war is over. Whether combatant or civilian, the survivors of way carry the experience with them.

Even after hostilities ended, many child soldiers acted as though they were still at war. In 1996, when UNICEF aid workers arrived at the village in which the author was stationed, he had already spent years living the life of a hardened soldier.

The future certainly seemed dark for the former boy soldiers who, while free from war, still acted like brutal monsters. But there was hope for them nonetheless.

In fact, the gentleness and kindness with which the author was treated helped him recover from the horrors he had perpetrated and lived through.