(2 of 3)
The Koreans. The courage of the South Koreans was a different kind: to G.I.s it seemed not sacrificial, not fanatical, but resigned. One bearded old "Papa-san" of the Korean Service Corps "choo-gied" mortar ammunition up one hill, then caught a bullet in his chest as he was starting back down the trail for more. He lay by the mortar position, blood leaking from his chest, and passed shells to the shorthanded mortar crew as he died. Each time the tube fired, the old man muttered a Korean word, but the Americans on the mortar never knew what it was.
The Korean language is difficult, and the G.I. did not have the time and energy to pick up more than a few words. So he learned about the Koreans from what he saw, and through the Pidgin English the Koreans themselves put together. In the back of a truck, choking on the fine, powdery Korean dust, wondering how the Koreans could live in it, he suddenly saw a Korean coughing too, and he realized that the armies had stirred up the dust and the Koreans suffered from it "same-same" as he.
In the cities, the children clustered around him, waist-high and squalling, grimy fists tugging at his sleeve. "Hey, sah-jint, you want buy? You want num-bah-one shoeshine? You want change-ee money, sah-jint? You want nice girl, maybe? Hey, sah-jint, you want numbahone nice virgin girl?" Sometimes they snatched a pen or wallet from his pocket and scampered off down an ill-smelling alley. Sometimes the crippled ones, scabrous and foul with dirt, hunched themselves into his path and clawed frantically at his trouser leg. "Money, skoshi money, little money! Three days, eat have-a-no, sah-jint."
He walked through the muddy, stinking, raucous market areas, holding his hand on his wallet, buying cheap souvenirs. There were fur caps and fur-lined boots, little carved figures, thousands of leather holsters and wallets, brass ashtrays and gaudy silk antimacassars, embroidered with the word "Korea," and the year. Behind the main streets, in the narrow alleys, he could purchase—with "no sweat"—scarce Army supplies, like light bulbs and radio batteries. There were piles of leather jackets from U.S. mail-order houses, gleaming rows of cheap watches smuggled in from Japan, gay shelves of Japanese cosmetics, even stacks of C-ra-tion cans. "You want buy, sah-jint? Numbah one."
That was in the cities. In the country, he held his breath when he passed farmers fertilizing their paddies with excrement from the "honey buckets." "Mama-sans" squatted on riverbanks, pounding their washing with sticks on the wet, flat stones, while their black-haired infants slumbered on their backs. Old men with black "birdcage" hats and two-foot-long pipes squatted, low down on their haunches, in front of ruined huts. Refugees, haggard and desperate, journeyed a long road, furniture and bedding piled high on "A-frame" and head, bound for a filthy cardboard shack which they would then call home. Before entering it, they would remove their shoes.