Best Moment I shared a room with the KATUSA SGT assigned to my Platoon. His English was pretty good and one night, even though a bit drunk, he was practicing it on me and asked, "How do Americans tell each other apart?" My response was the classic, "Huh?" So he repeated the question. I looked at him totally stunned as I had never considered this question before. I mean, how else do you do it? You look at the other American and he is taller, shorter, heavier, lighter, older, younger, big nose, small nose, etc. Then it dawned on me. Duh? How often have I heard, "Damned slopes (dinks, etc). Can't tell one from the other. All have slanty eyes, flat noses and yellow skin?" I probably chose the worse response possible at this point as I went into hysterics. When I calmed down and looked at him there was one confused and angry KATUSA SGT looking at me. Not surprising actually. I apologized for laughing and explained what I just wrote above to him and then we were both laughing which, in my experience, is not what many Koreans do around Americans. He too had never considered that we had the same problems with Orientals. After all a Chinese or Japanese look different to them from a Korean. Turned out okay but boy did I come close to really fouling up big time. Glad his English was pretty good.
Other Memories Even though a SGT (E5) I was the second highest ranking American NCO in my Platoon. That also meant that I got to pull Sergeant of the Guard a lot since SSG's were doing Battalion CQ Duties and Brigade CQ's were done by SFC/PSG's. We were a bit short handed as ONLY Americans were allowed to pull these details NOT the KATUSA NCO's. It also meant that I ended up as NCOIC just about every day of different American/KATUSA work details. The real trick was how to get both the GI's AND the KATUSA's on the detail to work at the same time. Often one group or the other would decide to slack off because the other group was not doing its' share of the detail. It got a lot easier after the KATUSA BN SGM whomped one of his soldiers up side the head in front of everyone on the detail. The ROK's I worked with, whether KATUSA or otherwise, were usually pretty good once you could communicate with them.
