One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [79]
Children can be a real threat in combat, one that is unavoidable on the modern battlefield. They think less about consequences; they act more rashly than adults, are less risk averse, and because they are children, can cause confusion and hesitation in the enemy. They are also cheap to train and easy to replace; thus, commanders can use them recklessly, as distractions, as forward attack units, as attacking waves to overrun enemy positions or send them in to combat zones to do the most dangerous work.
In Karbala, Iraq, during the 101st Airborne divisions assault in the spring of 2003, two embedded reporters recounted incidents that illustrate the tactical challenges and the confusion that children create on the battlefield. During the firefight for the city, according to Mathew Cox, of the Army Times, Pfc. Nick Boggs, of Bravo company was in position on a rooftop with an excellent view of the city. All day, the company had come under heavy attack from machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. From this vantage point, the twenty one-year-old from Petersburg, Alaska, saw an Iraqi man sprinting for cover. The man held an RPG under his arm. From the rooftop, the American forces opened fire and the man was taken down. An instant later, two boys “no older than ten” darted from an alleyway. They went to the fallen man. The Fedayeen often sent children into battle to retrieve weapons and those weapons were used to kill American soldiers. Pfc. Boggs had the kids in his sights.
“I didn’t shoot. I didn’t shoot,” the soldier said. When the kids reached down to retrieve the weapon, Nick Boggs had no choice. He fired his own weapon and, when the smoke cleared, both boys lay in the street, dead.
In another incident on the same day, U.S. News correspondent Julian Barnes reports that, during the fighting, Sgt. Jason Sypherd and Sgt. Troy Hanner watched as two boys raced out to retrieve an RPG from a fallen soldier. Sypherd shouted to his unit that it was kids in the street. He yelled for them not to pick up the weapons. Then he fired warning shots to which the boys, well trained, did not react. They reached for the weapon, and both Sypherd and Hanner fired, killing one boy and sending the other running away. A moment later, Jason Sypherd threw up. He was twenty-four years old and had just killed a child.
In both cases (which, because of the chaos, could have been the same incident reported differently), the soldiers involved hesitated in combat when faced with children on the battlefield. They had not been adequately prepared to deal with facing young children in the enemy forces. After the fighting, the soldiers involved were demoralized and depressed. “I keep trying to think of something else,” Sypherd told Barnes. “But I can only think of that boy. War is a bitch.”
Though they can be skilled and fierce fighters, disciplined or ruthless, child soldiers are still children who will, if they survive, become adults. For youth who have grown up only knowing war, it is believed that violence will be a way of life. Child soldiers will have missed most of their education; they will lack many life skills. If they are not reintegrated into society, given a reason for hope, given opportunities for the future, it will be all too easy for them to return to violence,