Dancing to the Beat of Battle and Bullets From an Ak47
Evening Standard - London › March 23, 2009
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Summary
WARCHILD: A BOY SOLDIER'S STORY by Emmanuel Jal, with Megan Lloyd Davies (Abacus, Pounds 12.99) SAM KILEY EMMANUEL Jal was 11 years old when he "learned that battle is like music -- it ebbs and flows, screeching and silent in turns" when he fought Ethiopian rebels who were trying to expel his Sudanese guerrilla movement from their country. He was skinny and terrified. Lying in a scrape in the ground when the enemy attacked, he wet himself. Then he fired, and fired. He ran out of bullets, reloaded his AK47, and fired again. At the age when most Western kids are struggling with no more than the transition to secondary school, he screwed up his face and prayed: "Please don't let them shoot my eyes, please don't make me blind." Jal's journey through the previous three years, from happy son of a Sudanese policeman to refugee and child soldier, takes him from uncomprehending innocence to coldblooded killer in the "Red Army" of child soldiers raised by the Sudan People's Liberation Army to fight the Muslim north. It is also an astonishing narrative of human physical endurance.
When the SPLA was split by Riek Machar in 1991, Jal followed Machar, a fellow Nuer tribesman, and defected. The move involved a march across savannah and swamp, which makes the BravoSee the full content of this document
Extract
Dancing to the Beat of Battle and Bullets From an Ak47
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