On Leyte

TIME Correspondent John Walker followed General MacArthur to Leyte. Last week he radioed this account of newsmen under fire.

I was sleeping on an iron cot in a flimsy wooden house, something like a run-down American beach cottage, in the town of Tacloban. Several correspondents were staying there. Asahel ("Ace") Bush of the Associated Press and John Terry of the Chicago Daily News were in one room, Stanley Gunn of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Clete Roberts of the Blue Network and I in another, John Dowling of the Chicago Sun in a third.

"The Loudest Noise I Ever Heard." At 5 a.m. a large Japanese plane dove low and before any alarm could be sounded, let go a salvo of 100-kilogram bombs, one of which got the street corner 50 ft. from our house. The noise was the loudest I have ever heard. I landed in a sitting position half out of bed, and hopelessly tangled in mosquito netting.

It was very dark and the air was choking with the reek of cordite and grit and the fine dry dust of rotten old woodwork. My eyes and nose were full of dirt. I was shivering from panic and excitement, but at the same time experiencing an extraordinary sensation of being completely all right and unhurt, no matter what horrible thing had happened.

A man at my feet said in a tight voice, "I'm hit. Can you help me up? Are my legs broken? Help me out of this hole." I reached down and took hold of Stanley Gunn's hand and began trying to lift him gently. A few seconds later when the other correspondents wobbled in with flashlights I realized that there was no hole.. I grabbed a towel and twisted it around his leg for a tourniquet. Gunn was magnificent in spite of the terrible wounds he had suffered. He sat partly up and watched me get the towel adjusted, and even held it himself for a while. Clete Roberts ignored an injured wrist and started out to find a doctor and ambulance.

Death by Fragment. In the next room McCarthy and Dowling were trying to help Terry. There was nothing anyone could do for Ace Bush. He had been instantly killed by a fragment. His body was virtually un marked, his face calm and serene. It was obvious that he had not known even a momentary flash of panic or pain.

We worked over the two badly wounded men, breaking out jungle medical kits and putting on bandages. As we worked we could hear screams and wailing outside, for the bombs had riddled several Fili pino houses. It wasn't until daylight, when our injured men had been taken away in an ambulance, that I fully realized what happened to our house. The side near the street was riddled with bomb fragments.

The stuff had gone flashing through those frail wooden walls like buckshot through a berry crate. Some of it had even sliced through the walls and partitions and come out on the far side. The mosquito net above my bed was ripped in a dozen places.

All I could find wrong with me was a few tiny cuts on the right arm, a tiny burn on the left hand, and a tiny nick on the left ear.

"That Night I Dug a Trench." Terry had had one blood transfusion and was definitely out of danger. Five correspondents gave blood for Gunn, who was much more gravely injured and the nurses unquestionably saved his life. I didn't get any work done that day. Most of it I sat around the hospital holding my big head in my hands and waiting to give blood if they wanted type zero. That night I dug myself a slit trench and slept in it.

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