Praise for A LONG WAY GONE

stopped to let silence bring night. I lay next to the corporal, whose eyes were redder thannormal. He ignored my stare. We heard footsteps on the dried grasses and immediately tookaim. A group of gunmen and boys emerged from under the bushes, crouched, and took quickcover behind trees. As they got closer, we opened fire, dropping those who stood in front.The rest we chased into the swamp, where we lost them. There, crabs had already begunfeasting on the eyes of the dead. Limbs and fragmented skulls lay on top of the bog, and thewater in the swamp had been replaced by blood. We flipped the bodies over and took theirammunition and guns.I was not afraid of these lifeless bodies. I despised them and kicked them to flip them. Ifound a G3, some ammunition, and a handgun that the corporal kept for himself. I noticed thatmost of the dead gunmen and boys wore lots of jewelry on their necks and wrists. Someeven wore more than five gold watches on one wrist. One boy, whose uncombed hair wasnow soaked with blood, wore a Tupac Shakur T-shirt that said: “All eyes on me.” We lost afew adult soldiers on our side and my friends Musa and Josiah. Musa, the storyteller, wasgone. There was no one around to tell us stories and make us laugh at times when we neededit. And Josiah—if only I had let him continue sleeping on the first day of training, perhaps hewouldn’t have gone to the front line in the first place.We arrived in the village with nightfall and sat against the walls of the army house. It wasquiet, and as if we were afraid of silence, we began cleaning the blood off our guns and theones we had brought with us, cleaning and oiling their chambers. We shot the weapons intothe air to test their effectiveness. I went for supper that night, but was unable to eat. I only