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Grabbing our baggage, we started off along the river bank, hoping that we could find some boat that might take us across. Finally, we decided that it was pointless to attempt to find boats during the night and in our weakened condition. We headed toward a KMAG housing area on Seoul's outskirts. It was then about three. Inside the abandoned U.S. military reservation it was quiet except for the boom of guns and heavy mortars in the distance. We found one house with a light still burning inside.
"It Can't Happen Here." This hastily evacuated house still had the stage props of any typical American home. There were brrightly colored children's phonograph records, a woman's lacy hat, copies of Collier's and the Saturday Evening Post, and bottles of Coca-Cola in the refrigerator. Something inside this comfortable house seemed to say: "It can't happen here." Outside, the field guns rumbled.
Before dawn, we gathered up all available food and clothing and prepared to make a run for it.
We drove jeeps along the sandy river flats to ferrying points on the Han River several miles upstream from the shattered bridge. There beetle-like rowboats jammed to the gunwales with refugees were plying back & forth across the broad, shallow stream.
Hundreds of families lined the banks waiting for transport. Whenever a boat touched shore there was a desperate, pathetic scramble for places inside. A small, bustling official with a large club had appointed himself temporary beachmaster. Like a maddened punchinello, he flailed at the gathering crowds of refugees, screaming at them to back away from the bank. The docile crowd obeyed.
Soldiers also joined us, told the story of Seoul's fall. "Their tanks were too many," said one, "and their guns too big. We had nothing to fight them with. What can you do with rifles?" "Where are the American airplanes?" asked an MP sergeant-major bitterly.
"Morale Is Fine." We asked another soldier, a stubbled infantryman with a cluster of grenades dangling from his belt, how morale was. "Morale is fine. We have the best morale in the world," he said, "but what can morale do against planes and tanks?"
After a half hour, I took a rowboat to the south side of the river and found a large flat-bottomed skiff big enough to take our jeeps across. We had our troubles with the current but managed to get the skiff to the next shore and safety.
As we traveled south, with our jeeps slipping and miring down in the narrow muddy roads twisting through rice paddies, lines of refugees paused in flight to cheer the first Americans they had seen that day. More often they incongruously clapped—with the fast, excited clapping of a tennis audience at Wimbledon or Forest Hills. A bent old woman wearing a dusty white dress shouted "We will win" over & over again. Others took up her cry.
At 10:25, as we entered a town, suddenly a shout went up from Korean soldiers on tops of jeeps and from dirty, wearied refugees. Wildly cheering people ran into the dusty roads and pointed at the sky. All traffic stopped. Never had I seen such a heartfelt manifestation of joy. Above us, flying northward in neat formation, were six American B-26s.