In areas of Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East it is common practice to lure children into the horrific business of war by using rape, murder, fear, drugs and kidnapping as tools to keep the machine well oiled. They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children is an unflinching look at the harshness of the inhumane practice of turning children into killing machines. It is one of the hardest books you will ever read because it is so devastating and truthful. This book casts light on atrocities committed to girls and boys as young as six and seven, raped and drugged, tricked into murdering. The author, Romeo Dallaire, is a retired Lieutenant General of Canada. Now a senator, he served 37 years with the armed forces. He led an ill fated United Nations peace-keeping mission in Rwanda and as such came face to face with the reality of child soldiers. He is an officer of the Order of Canada and an Officer of the Legion of Merit of The United States. This story begins in Africa. There is a moving introduction by Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone, himself a child soldier for many years. The book moves into a slightly cumbersome stretch in which Dallaire outlines his purpose with the book and what is to be expected. Dallaire’s youth was spent in Quebec. He is the son of a retired Canadian staff sergeant serving in the Canadian Army. His father, he says, suffered what would now be called post-traumatic stress disorder. There is interesting background here and a chapter dubbed Warrior Boy illustrates how he grew into the young man that would eventually be perhaps Canada’s best known peacekeeper. This Canadian idyllic life of the young Dallaire, while not perfect, appears to be almost absurd in its privilege when juxtaposed against the chapter that follows, Kidom. Kidom is almost a children’s bedtime story when it begins. It is a brother and sister in Africa playing and imagining with a child-like sense of wonder at watching the world and nature unfold around them quietly and happily. The characters in this section are composites as is pointed out clearly early on, but they are rooted in reality. This portion of the book is the most powerful and devastating and heart-wrenching bit. It is told, at first, with something that leans heavily into the territory of magic realism as would be seen in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. But by the end of the arc that is Kidom your heart will be ripped out. Kidom is the hardest part of the book to read, but it is also the most compelling. While I understand why this book was written in this way, I think this portion might have stood alone. In fact as hard as it was to read I think it would have been literary genius if the author had sustained that fictional composite story throughout. “I lay down on my belly in the soft dust, and with my chin cupped in my palms and watched a little sandfly struggle over the uneven ground. Why was he walking? If I had wings I’d always fly.” But Kidom ends on the saddest of notes and on with more historical fact. The book delves deeply into some of the humanitarian work and research being done around the world to understand and solve the problem of child soldiers. Chapter Eight winds back around to the story that was started in the section Kidom. In this chapter though, a fictional peacekeeper reacts to threat of death by killing a child soldier and Dallaire fictionalizes how that is experienced by a soldier. The book ends with a call to advocacy for all readers. There are simple suggestions on how to get involved by contacting media and more complex ideas on how to get involved fully with the Child Soldiers Initiative. This is Romeo Dallaire’s second book. Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda  is the retired Lieutenant General’s first book, which also won the Governor General’s Literary Award in Canada. Shake Hands was acclaimed around the world and was also turned into an Emmy award-winning documentary and a feature film. 

They FightLike Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Quest To Eradicate The Use of Child Soldiers, by Romeo Dallaire with Jessica Dee Humphreys, Hardcover: 320 pages, Walker & Company (May 24, 2011) New York, $26.00 US