Memoir Of A Boy Soldier Quotes

Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them.

In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.

...children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.

I was still hesitant to let myself let go, because I still believed in the fragility of happiness.

I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I've come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end...

When I was young, my father used to say, ‘If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.’ I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where I was going. Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive.

We must strive to be like the moon

Some people tried to hurt us to protect themselves, their family and communities...This was one of the consequences of civil war. People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy. Even people who knew you became extremely careful about how they related or spoke to you.

My teeth became sour as I listened to his story. It was then that I understood why he was quiet all the time.

If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.

How many more times do we have to come to terms with death before we find safety?" he asked. He waited a few minutes, but the three of us didn't say anything. He continued: "Every time people come at us with the intention of killing us, I close my eyes and wait for death. Even though I am still alive, I feel like each time I accept death, part of me dies. Very soon I will completely die and all that will be left is my empty body walking with you. It will be quieter than I am.

Sometimes I closed my eyes hard to avoid thinking, but the eye of the mind refused to be closed and continued to plague me with images.

The branches of the trees looked as if they were holding hands and bowing their heads in prayer.

I took out my grenade and put my fingers inside the pin. 'Do you boys want this to be your last meal, or do you want to answer his question?

My squad is my family, my gun is my provider, and protector, and my rule is to kill or be killed.

Every time people come at us with the intention of killing us, I close my eyes and wait for death. Even thought I am still alive, I feel like each time I accept death, part of me dies. Very soon I will completely die and all that will be left is my empty body walking with you. It will be quieter than I am.

I was sad to leave, but I was also pleased to have met people outside of Sierra Leone. Because if I was to get killed upon my return, I knew that a memory of my existence was alive somewhere in the world.

These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past." (page 20)

That night for the first time in my life I realized that it is the physical presence of people and their spirits that gives a town life. With the absence of so many people, the town became scary., the night darker, and the silence unbearably agitating. Normally, the crickets and the birds sang in the evening before the sun went down. But this time they didn't, and the darkness set in very fast. The mood wasn't in the sky; the air was stiff, as if nature itself was afraid of what was happening.

We took a bowl each and started eating. He went back into the little room, and by the time he returned to the table with his own bowl of food to eat with us, we had already finished. He was shocked and looked around to see if we had done something else with the food.

At night it felt as if we were walking with the moon. It followed us under thick clouds and waited for us at the other end of dark forest paths. It would disappear with sunrise but return again, hovering on our path. Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them. Under these stars I used to hear stories, but now it seemed as if it was the sky that was telling us a story as its stars fell, violently colliding with each other. The moon hid behind clouds to avoid seeing what was happening.

If you're alive, then there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.

I knew I could never forget my past, but I wanted to stop talking about it so that I would be fully present in my new life.

Children played guessing games, telling each other whether the gun fired was and AK-47, a G3, an RPG, or a machine gun.

This isn’t your fault, you know. It really isn’t. You’ll get though this. (page 151)

This is one of the consequences of the civil war. People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy. Even people who knew you became extremely careful about how they related or spoke to you. (page 37)

What we dedicate today is not a memorial to war, rather it's a tribute to the physical and moral courage that makes heroes out of farm and city boys and that inspires Americans in every generation to lay down their lives for people they will never meet, for ideals that make life itself worth living.

I was afraid to fall asleep, but staying awake also brought back painful memories. Memories I sometimes wish I could wash away, even though I am aware that they are an important part of what my life is; who I am now. I stayed up all night, anxiously waiting for daylight, so that I could fully return to my new life, to rediscover happiness I had known as a child, the joy that had stayed alive inside me even through times when being alive itself became a burden. These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past.

Circumstances will change and things will be fine, just hold on a little more

Bahkan di dalam kegilaan pun masih ada keindahan yang sejati dan alami

ولكني كنت اعلم لن فرص العودة للقرية ضئيلة كما أننا لا نملك اي قدرة على التحكم في مستقبلنا كنا نعرف فقط , كيف نبقى على قيد الحياة

I was so happy that my mother, father, and two brothers had somehow found one another. Perhaps my mother and father have gotten back together, I thought.

I feel like each time I accept death, part of me dies.

Twelve years ago, when I was 10, I played at being a soldier. I walked up the brook behind our house in Bronxville to a junglelike, overgrown field and dug trenches down to water level with my friends. Then, pretending that we were doughboys in France, we assaulted one another with clods of clay and long, dry reeds. We went to the village hall and studied the rust rifles and machine guns that the Legion post had brought home from the First World War and imagined ourselves using them to fight Germans. But we never seriously thought that we would ever have to do it. The stories we heard later; the Depression veterans with their apple stands on sleety New York street corners; the horrible photographs of dead bodies and mutilated survivors; “Johnny Got His Gun” and the shrill college cries of the Veterans of Future Wars drove the small-boy craving for war so far from our minds that when it finally happened, it seemed absolutely unbelievable. If someone had told a small boy hurling mud balls that he would be throwing hand grenades twelve years later, he would probably have been laughed at. I have always been glad that I could not look into the future.

Far more humbling to me was a letter I received years later from Sergeant Talbert. Referring to the attack at the intersection, he wrote, “Seeing you in the middle of that road, wanting to move, was too much. You were my total inspiration. All my boys felt the same way.” “Tab” was far too generous with his compliments. His own action at Carentan personified his excellence as both a soldier and a leader. He helped clear that intersection and carried a wounded Lipton to safety. Later when the Germans finally counterattacked, Talbert was everywhere, directing his men to the right place, supervising their fire, before he himself was wounded and evacuated.

Kingsley could ‘do’ the sound of a brass band approaching on a foggy day. He could become the Metropolitan line train entering Edgware Road station. He could be four wrecked tramps coughing in a bus shelter (this was very demanding and once led to heart palpitations). To create the hiss and crackle of a wartime radio broadcast delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt was for him scant problem (a tape of it, indeed, was played at his memorial meeting, where I was hugely honored to be among the speakers). The pièce de résistance, an attempt by British soldiers to start up a frozen two-ton truck on a windy morning ‘somewhere in Germany,’ was for special occasions only. One held one's breath as Kingsley emitted the first screech of the busted starting-key. His only slightly lesser vocal achievement—of a motor-bike yelling in mechanical agony—once caused a man who had just parked his own machine in the street to turn back anxiously and take a look. The old boy's imitation of an angry dog barking the words 'fuck off' was note-perfect.

One man carried his dead son. He thought the boy was still alive. The father was covered with his son's blood, and as he ran he kept saying, "I will get you to the hospital, my boy, everything will be fine." Perhaps it was necessary that he cling to false hopes, since they kept him running from harm.

While at Colonel Niel's marquee I saw a detail of soldiers bring out a man by the name of Rowland, whom they were going to shoot to death with musketry, by order of a court-martial, for desertion. He was being hauled to the place of execution in a wagon, sitting on an old gun box, which was to be his coffin. When they got to the grave, which had been dug the day before, the water had risen in it, and a soldier was baling it out. Rowland spoke up and said, 'Please hand me a drink of that water, as I want to drink out of my own grave so the boys will talk about it when I am dead, and remember Rowland.

With a gesture of his hand towards the water, the Feldwebel now demands: ‘Drink, Ruski!’ The old fellow looks at him with a crafty expression, smiles and refuses several times while repeatedly saying something like: ‘Pan karosch, pan karosch.’ The Feldwebel now becomes impatient. He grabs the old fellow by the neck and shoves his face in the bucket; the old boy chokes and swallows. He looks a bit surprised, but not too concerned. In other words, the water’s safe.

saw nothing finer or more moving in Russia than Tolstoy’s grave. That illustrious place of pilgrimage lies out of the way, alone in the middle of the woods. A narrow footpath leads to the mound, nothing but a rectangle of soil raised above ground level, with no one guarding or keeping watch on it, only two huge trees casting their shade. Leo Tolstoy planted those trees himself, so his granddaughter told me beside his grave. When he and his brother Nikolai were boys, they had heard one of the village women say that a place where you planted trees would be a happy one. So they planted two saplings, partly as a kind of game. Only later did the old man remember that promise of happiness, and then he expressed a wish to be buried under the trees he had planted. And his wish was carried out. In its heart-rending simplicity, his grave is the most impressive place of burial in the world. Just a small rectangular mound in the woods with trees overhead, no cross, no tombstone, no inscription. The great man who suffered more than anyone from his own famous name and reputation lies buried there, nameless, like a vagabond who happened to be found nearby or an unknown soldier. No one is forbidden to visit his last resting place; the flimsy wooden fence around it is not kept locked. Nothing guards that restless man’s final rest but human respect for him. While curious sightseers usually throng around the magnificence of a tomb, the compelling simplicity of this place banishes any desire to gape. The wind rushes like the word of God over the nameless grave, and no other voice is heard. You could pass the place without knowing any more than that someone is buried here, a Russian lying in Russian earth. Napoleon’s tomb beneath the marble dome of Les Invalides, Goethe’s in the grand-ducal vault at Weimar, the tombs in Westminster Abbey are none of them as moving as this silent and movingly anonymous grave somewhere in the woods, with only the wind whispering around it, uttering no word or message of its own.

Jika kamu masih hidup, selalu ada harapan untuk hari yang lebih baik dan hal baik untuk dijalani. Jika tidak ada hal baik yang masih ada dalam takdir seseorang, ia akan mati

She was wearing her white uniform and was on her way to take on other traumatized children. It must be tough living with so many war stories. I was just living with one, mine, and it was difficult, as the nightmares about what had happened continued to torment me. Why does she do it? Why do they all do it? I thought as we went our separate ways. It was the last time I saw her. I loved her but never told her.

Often we feel the need to say that a book isn’t just about a particular time or place but is about the human spirit. People say this of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, or Night by Elie Wiesel, or A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah.

These days I lived in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which triggered memories from the past.

When I was very little, my father used to say, “If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.” I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where I was going. Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive.

We must strive to be like the moon.

Still writing tales?” he said. I told him yes and he nodded once, returning his attention to the snake. Very few of the boys I grew up with had finished high school, but they accepted that I was a writer. I was merely doing what other men did—following in my father’s footsteps. Sonny was a plumber. The son of a local drunk was the town drunk in two towns. Sons of soldiers joined the army. That I had become a writer was perfectly normal.

This isn’t your fault, you know. It really isn’t. You’ll get through this.

The communist Pathet Lao soldiers and their North Vietnamese allies infiltrated Hmong villages and began a systematic campaign to kill off the Hmong who believed in the tenets of democracy and had fought against communist rule. While many of the 30,000 Hmong men and boys recruited by the CIA of the United States had been killed, the remnants of their fight remained, in the hearts and the homes of their wives and children, their mothers and fathers, their friends and neighbors. The Secret War, the biggest covert operation in CIA history, and its ramifications would tear into the history of a people, break into the pages of their lives, and let the winds of war and death blow them all over the world.

A Communist soldier told my family that a big truck would come for the men in the morning. The trucks had been picking up men and boys from their village for months. Those who had gone on the trucks had not returned. The soldiers said that they were sent to reeducation camps, but the family knew better. All over the mountain villages, people could smell the strong stench of rotten flesh coming from the jungle. Women and girls followed the smell in search of the men they loved. Sometimes the bodies were in a pile. Other times the bodies would be in different spots. Close to my father’s village, Grandma and my uncles had found the body of a young boy inches away from his father. He had left finger tracks on the ground where he had been pulled away from his father. He was sliced at the throat. The father had been shot. Most of the time, the bodies were remnants, half eaten by wild animals. What remained was bloated and blue, flesh ballooning from stained, torn clothes. The Hmong of Phou Bia mountain knew that the coming of the trucks meant death. My father’s family knew that they had to leave their village before the soldiers arrived with their guns on the big trucks.

U.S. and Australian WWII archives hold many files detailing numerous acts of Japanese army cannibalism. For example, of those 157,646 sons of Japan sent to New Guinea, only 10,072 survived. Allied bullets killed relatively few. The vast majority were felled by disease and starvation. General Aotsu was aware of the plight of his men. He wrote that incidents of cannibalism in New Guinea were "frequent". Japanese boys were starving and had to eat whatever they could find. Often, all they could find was one another. Harumich Nogi, the chief of a Japanese naval police force stationed in the South Pacific, later recorded in his memoirs a story told to him by an army lieutenant: "There was absolutely nothing to eat, and so we decided to draw lots. The one who lost would be killed and eaten. But the one who lost started to run away so we shot him. He was eaten. You probably think that many of us raped the local women. But women were not regarded as objects of sexual desire. They were regarded as the object of our hunger. ... I met some soldiers in the mountains who were carrying baked human arms and legs. It was not guerrillas but our own soldiers who we were frightened of.

Sometimes night has a way of speaking to us, but we almost never listen.

It's like Max's dad has pressed the Pause button on the remote control. The argument is paused. But it is not over. Max is the only boy I have ever seen who makes toy soldiers retreat or surrender. Every other boy makes them die instead.

Ishmael Beah’s memoir of his life as a boy soldier in Sierra Leone, A Long Way Gone.

How many more times do we have to come to terms with death before we find safety?

Every time people come at us with the intention of killing us, I close my eyes and wait for death, part of me dies. Very soon I will completely die and all that will be left is my empty body walking with you. It will be quieter than I am.

To survive each passing day was my goal in life. At villages where we managed to find some happiness by being treated to food and fresh water, I knew it was temporary and that we were only passing through. So I couldn't bring myself to be completely happy. It was much easier to be sad than to go back and forth between emotions, and this gave me the determination I needed to keep moving. I was never disappointed, since I always expected the worst to happen.

That man-to-man battle in the cornfield in Ukraine was like Achilles versus Hector,” I said, sounding very much like a know-it-all teenager. “It kind of makes you wish all wars were fought this way.” My father looked at me sadly. “The difference is that the Russian soldier and I weren’t leaders standing for something we believed in. We were just boys who crossed each other’s paths and had to kill each other because we were enemies.

On January 12, on a firing range located in a small valley called San Juan, at the end of the island in the province of Oriente, hundreds of soldiers from the defeated army of Batista had been lined up in a trench knee-deep and more than fifty yards long. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were machine-gunned there where they stood. Then with bulldozers the trenches were turned into mass graves. There had been no trial of any kind for those men. Many of them were hardly more than boys, who had joined the army because money and food were scarce at home. The mass execution was ordered by Raúl Castro and attended by him personally. Nor was it an isolated instance; other officers in Castro’s guerrilla forces shot ex-soldiers en masse without a trial, without any charges of any kind lodged against them, simply as an act of reprisal against the defeated army.

I went to the river, dove into the water, and sat at the bottom, but my thoughts followed me.