As I've said on other threads, I often wish that the Ottomans had defeated TE Lawrence in WWI. Come to think of it, if the central powers would have won WWI, we would have been spared Hitler, Lenin and the crazy Arabs.
One of my uncle's most poignant stories about the Korean War is this . . .
He and two from his squad were injured and awaiting transportation to off-shore hospital ships. All three were too badly injured to fight. This was only days after the Chinese entered the war and started over-running our guys in North Korea.
Things weren't going well . . . an order had been given to retreat but there just wasn't enough litter-carriers or means available to evacuate my uncle and his two buddies. Two Turks who were "embedded" with the unit to get some experience and four others from my uncle's unit refused to leave them. My uncle didn't know either one of the Turks, nor did they know any of the three who were wounded.
Two of the four Americans were quickly killed, but the remaining two and the two Turks held out for nineteen hours with nothing but two machine guns, three M-1's, and nine hand grenades. At the end of the siege, before the cavalry came . . . my uncle always said, "after eighteen hours and fifty-nine minutes of pure hell" . . . the ammunition was spent and it was hand-to-hand fighting. The two Turks and the two Americans formed a circle around the three wounded men to keep the Chinese from bayoneting them to death.
And they succeeded. One of the Americans was killed in the hand-to-hand fights but both the Turks survived and my uncle said they were the meanest, baddest, most vicious, and loyal soldiers he's ever seen. And he was in World War II as well so he was exposed to many, many heroes.
He watched the entire battle but, missing one arm and half a leg, he couldn't help much. He said the Turks would never leave their sides and they had many, many opportunities to bug out. He had nightmares about this for twelve years. Until my grandmother arranged for one of the Turks to visit him in Texas in the mid-60's. Then . . . he never had another nightmare.
There were no medals for valor handed out for this battle . . . wrong war, wrong nationalities, and we were getting our asses kicked . . . but my uncle said he would take two Turks on his side over an entire battalion of any of the other UN troops involved in the Korean War. He said, "You never had to look for the Turks. They were the sumbitches kicking ass to your right and left."