Later, Beah reflected that as a boy soldier, his “innocence had been replaced by fear and we had become monsters. There was nothing we could do about it” (Beah 55). “There is a feeling that war destroys and distorts all social relations so that those who are children during this time cannot help but be part of generations faced with the loss of innocence” (Berry 102). The Social Science and Medicine journal reported that “Children formerly associated with armed forces and armed groups have lost their naïveté and this profoundly shapes their psychosocial adjustment” (Agnew-Blais 1). While growing up in his village, “there were no indications that [his] childhood was threatened, much less that [he] would be robbed of it (Beah 101). “When children
