I sort of adopted a young orphan by the name of Kim. I have him little assignments and paid him with scrip and food. Once when we had an inspection c… - Roy Benavidez

The Koreans treated us all the same, too. A lot of them liked us, or tried to. Most Koreans really appreciated the American blood that was spilled on their soil to help maintain their freedom. Some didn't. To some few, a distinct minority, we were just another group of invaders, like the Japanese in the last war and the Chinese before them. They could hardly be blamed for feeling that way after living for so many years with foreigners in their land.
Getting to know the Koreans helped me to begin to develop an understanding about the cost of freedom. Not all of the Koreans were Slicky Boys. The Korean soldiers I worked with were excellent. The ROK Army soldiers and Marines were much less well equipped, fed, and paid than we were, but they were committed to doing what they could to preserve their five-thousand-year-old culture. They had an intense hatred for communism that I would see again when some of them fought in Vietnam.

Frankly, I don't believe in luck. Everything happens for some purpose. To begin with, I'm alive. I shouldn't be; I should have been dead many times over. No, I can't walk too well, I'm missing one lung, and I lock up like an old rusty gate if I sit too long, but I am alive. Most of my buddies aren't; almost all of them are gone. Over fifty-eight thousand other guys that I didn't know died with them, but I'm alive, and I'm here, and I owe them the telling of this story. Every one of them had his own story. Maybe he just stepped off a plane one day and got it from a misplaced mortar round. Maybe he was walking back from the latrine when a sniper got him. Maybe he's a bigger "hero" than I'm supposed to be, but few are alive to tell the tale. Every one of those guys sacrificed his life, or his limbs, or his humanity, or his youth, or his mind, and I'm alive to tell about it. Up until now, nobody has really cared too much about hearing our side of it, our stories. Maybe it's different now. But I can't tell everybody's story. I can only tell mine. This is not a story about war. It's a story about freedom and its cost.

Serving in Korea was not all misery for me. I felt more a part of something than I ever had in my life. I was a U.S. soldier. Maybe I was a little shorter, or a little darker, or had a different-sounding name from some, but to the other troops I was just one of them. A poor dogface freezing his butt off, too. It did me good. The Army had always separated me a little bit as a Hispanic, and I had always separated myself, too. Now they didn't have a choice and neither did I.