Child soldiers
Reader comment on item: Children Victimized by All Sides in Syrian Conflict
Submitted by Yoda, Mar 9, 2014 20:27
In my life it has been my happy and occasionally unhappy experience to encounter a vast number of people who experienced World War II firsthand in Europe as well as in Japan, as local civilians. Among them stands out a person who was a child warrior in Montenegro; he identified proudly as Serbian, and happily potted Nazis as a kid sniper during the 1940's. He was less happy to welcome the overlordship of his fellow Slavs via Stalin after the war, and eventually migrated to Paris, and then NY. He manifested no long lasting horrors from this sniper experience; as he told it, he was taught to use a rifle as a kid to hunt for dinner anyway, and if a Nazi got in the way of his sight, so much the better. He did try to waste as few bullets as possible on the Nazis...He was protecting his family while gathering food.
I would suggest that automatically declaring that all such kids are automatically screwed psychologically is a flawed argument. Granted, my above example was not mustered into a kids' unit by force. But he acted, repeatedly, and violently, and remained proud of his service to humanity, as he saw it. Should we demean it? Should we declare it, prima facie, wrong? He went on to have a great life, raised two kids with a wonderful Croatian wife. That in itself should give some food for thought. The Croatians were allied with the Nazis during the war.
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