I shared this with the other class on their discussion board and just wanted to share it with all of you too.
This summer I took a Young Adult Literature class and I was assigned to read the book
A Long Way Gone: Memiors of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. He was born in 1980 in Sierra Leone and by the time that he was 13 he was in the military fighting the rebels in his country. And these rebels were killing everyone in the villages that they went through, burning and destroying everything as they went. He and the other boys he fought with, one as young as seven years old, were also forced to take drugs, specifically marijuana and cocaine.
As we were watching the Mai Lai video I couldn't help but think of Beah's book. If you have time, it is a very interesting read and very much worth the time. Here is a link to the website:
http://www.alongwaygone.com/index.html