Читать книгу Boy's Own War - G. S. Willmott - Страница 13

Joshua died doing something he loved; he wasn’t shot by an enemy bullet or ripped apart by shellfire. His generation and the fact he lived in Australia provided every opportunity for Josh to live a full and happy life. It was fate that he died on the slopes of Falls Creek.

This book is about war, yet it’s not a novel about enemies fighting to the death or examining the strategies of battles. This book is about young boys some as young as eight fighting killing and being killed.

The first six chapters follow the lives of two normal happy teenagers attending school playing sport and learning about girls.

Joshua dies at the age of sixteen in a snowboarding accident.

The contrast between the experiences of Cameron and Joshua and the other boys in this book is stark. Teenage years are some of the most precious times of our existence when innocence and bravado are taken away at such a young age it is tragic, like Harry Jordan.

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

Socrates 450BC

Teenage years should be spent attending school and learning so that a career can be forged in the later years a time for playing sport and socialising with the opposite sex. According to UNICEF 300,000 children are engaged in war today. They are not learning mathematics or science but learning how to be ruthless killing machines. This is a catastrophe that must be addressed by the governments of this world.

Billions of dollars are spent annually on research to alleviate aids, measles, malaria and other diseases that are devastating the earth’s children yet very little being done to minimise the loss of children’s lives in war.

The stories that follow in Boys Own War will sadden you, shock you and hopefully inspire you.