What is happening in chapter 2 of A Long Way Gone?

Chapter 2 begins with one of Ishmael’s nightmares. He did not see the attack on his own village, but nonetheless has nightmares about it. In the nightmare, Ishmael sees dead, “mangled bodies,” with their intestines spilling “through the bullet holes in their stomachs” and “brain matter (coming) out of their noses and ears.” In the nightmare, Ishmael is pushing a wheelbarrow containing “a dead body wrapped in white bedsheets.” He does not know whose body it is or why he is taking this particular body to the cemetery.
When he arrives at the cemetery, the body seems to start bleeding again, and “Blood spots begin to emerge on the white bedsheets.” He unwraps the bedsheets, “beginning at the feet,” and sees that the body is covered in bullet holes. When he gets to the face, he realizes that this is his own body, dead and riddled with bullet holes.
Ishmael at this point awakens from the nightmare. He is in New York, where he has been living for “over a month.” He recalls his days as a soldier in Sierra Leone, and he remembers how he, as part of a “squad,” opened fire upon another “armed group,” killing them all, taking their ammunition, and eating their food. He remembers the blood leaking from the bullet holes in their bodies, just as the blood had leaked from his own body in his nightmare.
Chapter 2 concludes with Ishmael unable to go back to sleep. He is afraid of his nightmares but is afraid also of his memories. He stays awake all night, “anxiously waiting for daylight.”