[Ushiro growls, turning to face Kaworu, eyes narrowed.]
There was no one in charge. The army made sure we weren't assassinated before we could fight - and they didn't even do that for all of us - but they couldn't fight, or train us. It was just fifteen kids thrown into a situation with no training and a hell of a lot of shitty situations. The only sort of 'guide' we got was in the form of a shitty little creature who talked in riddles and never told us anything useful until it was too late. We were fighting other worlds before we even knew what was going on.
I don't know what the hell kind of situation you had in your world, but I'm willing to bet you didn't have kids as young as ten years old given the knowledge that they were going to be destroying an entire planet and then dying, all to try to save a planet that sometimes doesn't seem like it fucking deserves it.