One of the reasons I like reading war stories is because I can get glimpses into the minds of people from the way they react to difficult and often even extreme circumstances. How people fight in wartime can reveal a lot about how the same people will likely behave in peacetime. Here's an example from the book Chickenhawk by Robert Mason.
We were camped on an old ARVN rifle range near the village of Phu Cat, next to route 1. About a thousand ROKs from the Korean Tiger Division surrounded us as our security. That was nice because the ROKs (from the Republic of Korea) were devout killers. They spent their dawns beating each other up just for fun.
When I had first dealt with the Koreans at Bong Son valley, I was impressed by their zeal. When we drove by the Korean bridge guards, they jumped to attention with a shout. When we were mortared, the Koreans were the ones who came back to the camp carrying VC heads and the mortar tube. From the first time I saw them, I thought we'd be better off just giving the Koreans the country, if they could take it. They probably would've.
At Tuy Hoa, we flew missions for the Koreans. At the pickup point, Gary and I watched five or six Korean rangers load our ship with food and ammo in less than a minute. Very few Koreans spoke English, so when the ship was loaded, a young soldier ran out to us and gave us a slip of paper with a list of coordinates written on it. The soldier saluted and left. We were to fly to these places and they would know what to do.
At the first stop, the ship was barely on the ground when a whole team of Koreans unloaded their portion of the load in seconds. No words were spoken. At the next stop, the same thing happened. And the next. By eleven o'clock in the morning, we had finished a resupply mission that would have taken us all day had we been resupplying Americans.
All the Korean ROKs were hand-picked, highly trained volunteers. They were dedicated professionals who took the job seriously and because they were performing under the watchful eyes of their original teachers, they were out to prove their abilities. They did.
