(2 of 3)
Ruin & Rubble. The Hungnam dock area itself was already a torn and twisted slag heap of rubble and debris left earlier by U.S. strategic bombing attacks. The concrete warehouses at the dockside had somehow escaped major damage, but most of the rest of the port facilities were in complete ruin—huge gas storage tanks crumpled up like discarded beer cans, power plants stripped of their heavy, concrete walls, their generators rusting slowly away beneath alternate snow and freezing rain. Here & there stood long lines of brand-new, Japanese-made freight cars, their gleaming white sides neatly marked with the insignia of the U.S. Army's Transportation Corps. An officer stared blackly out over the rubble, waved at the freight cars, tanks and stacks of other heavy equipment and said, "God, we just got most of this stuff in here. If the gooks keep on coming, we're going to have to turn right the hell around and blow it all up again. God help the taxpayers."
A few miles away at Yonpo airfield, U.S. troops went grimly about the business of burning or blowing up barracks, buildings and other installations which the Chinese, whether they arrived in the morning or next week, might find useful. Similar demolitions went on at the same time in other parts of the U.S. perimeter. Withdrawing 3rd Division infantrymen blew their rail and motor bridges behind them. Near Hungnam X Corps engineers blew up another railroad bridge along with almost 400 freight cars and 30 locomotives. They said they definitely weren't going to blow up the new 1950 Japanese cars. At least they had had no orders to do so—yet.
Free Boat Ride. In the harbor meanwhile, the loading booms creaked and strained from dock to deck, and LCVPs (Landing Craft—"Vehicle, Personnel) churned busily from the beach out to an armada of U.S. Navy ships waiting to take out the troops. The South Korean navy sent one LST in to the beach to pick up several thousand R.O.K. troops, nurses and South Korean civilians. The Koreans wasted no time getting aboard. When they finally stopped getting aboard, the LST was crammed to the gunwales with over 4,000 passengers, including a fair share of the remaining civilian population of Hungnam—elderly men & women with their belongings wrapped in white cloth, young mothers with their kids strapped papoose style to their backs, and every older kid for miles around who had heard about the big free boat ride. As the LST settled slowly into the mud under the weight of its load, R.O.K. troops herded all the passengers off by shooting bursts of burp gunfire over their heads. The 4,000 Koreans scrambled blithely ashore and stood around grinning amiably, while the R.O.K. officers and the ship's crew argued furiously over the snafu and the skipper strained vainly to get his craft out of the mud.
The Colonel's Troubles. We drove up the main road from Hungnam to Hamhung, a distance of about eight miles. U.N. forces had officially evacuated the city that morning, amid some of the most spectacular demolitions of the retreat, but more were still to come.