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"Up There, eh Ned?" In Suwon Mac-Arthur was met by Syngman Rhee, President of the Korean Republic. Rhee, too. had come to Suwon by air; his light observation plane had eluded a North Korean fighter only by hedgehopping.
After a short conference with President Rhee, MacArthur gave his staff officers more cause for worry. "Let's go to the front and look at the troops," he said. "The only way to judge a war is to see the troops in action." What the general saw was not good.
In a black sedan accompanied by several jeeploads of American and Korean officers, MacArthur drove north toward the narrow Han River. On the south side of the Han the confused and battered South Korean army was vainly trying to form a new defense line. All along the road the general's car brushed through hundreds of South Korean soldiers and mobs of tired, frightened refugees. Many of the soldiers saluted and cheered as the American convoy passed. Even the refugees stopped and cheered. Said MacArthur's chief of staff, Major General Edward M. Almond: "The troops are ready and willing to take orders if someone is on hand to tell them what to do and how to do it." But in most of the South Korean army there seemed to be not enough of such leadership on hand.
The convoy halted once, a few miles south of the Han, within sight of enemy-held Seoul. MacArthur jabbed toward the city with his corncob pipe. To General Almond he said: "What do you say we push up there, eh Ned?" The party pushed on to a hill barely a mile from the 18th Century walls of Seoul. Clearly visible were towers of smoke from fires set by enemy shelling. Clearly audible was the crump of Communist mortars over the river. Below the hill a railroad bridge still stood intact, capable of supporting tanks and heavy trucks. Field glasses in hand, MacArthur ordered the bridge destroyed. Then he headed back for Suwon.
During the convoy's return trip several unidentified planes were sighted. The jeeps emptied in a rush as their occupants dived for the cover of roadside woods. MacArthur did not dive. He stepped sedately from the black sedan, walked away a few steps and gazed nonchalantly at the sky until the planes were gone. Then he dusted his leather jacket carefully and returned to the car.
When he took off again from Suwon airstrip, MacArthur, who had planned to spend two days in Korea, had been there only eight hours. Some read this change of plans as a bad sign. It was. Behind MacArthur lay a disintegrating South Korean army. Before him lay a battle which might, at the worst, take a place in U.S. history alongside the battle of Bataan.
"The Fatal Mistake." The descent from the triumph of V-J Day to the day of desperation at Suwon had been dizzyingly swift. Communist imperialism began its march through Asia before V-J Day. It used the most mobile of weapons, political agitation and ruthless organization. In Korea—as in China, Indo-China, Malaya and Burma—native Communists, shouting slogans of freedom and independence, were forging for their people heavier chains of slavery than even Asia had ever known.