Help Seemed Far Away .

TIME Correspondent Frank Gibney was in Tokyo when the North Koreans plunged over the 38th parallel. He flew to the fighting front, was injured when the South Korean army command blew up a bridge over the Han River. He reached safety and cabled this eyewitness account of the first days of South Korea's ordeal:

FOR two days Tokyo had wallowed in rumors of the Korea battle. With communications down and only three correspondents there, very little news had got out. SCAP machinery, taken by surprise, was undecided whether it should be playing war under peacetime rules or playing peace under wartime rules. For once, Tokyo's policymakers were worriedly and expectantly waiting for word from Washington.

Tuesday (June 27) at 5 p.m. I boarded a plane for Seoul's Kimpo airfield. With me were three other correspondents-Keyes Beech of the Chicago Daily News, Burton Crane of the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune's Marguerite Higgins.

"We Will Win." Under a rainy sky our plane hedgehopped over the broad, quiet Korean countryside. As the plane dipped over the airfield we noticed the first sign of war. Groups of American civilians were wildly waving strips of white cloth, towels and flags as a signal that the airfield was safe for landing.

Among the quiet Korean soldiers on the field there was no panic. "We will win. We will win," they said. They smiled the words with confidence. They meant them. At the same time, they did not disguise their worry. Against planes and tanks they wanted American help--and it then seemed far away.

Just in front of the administration building, Lieut. Colonel Edward Scott, tight-lipped and haggard, was methodically burning stacks of documents on the rubble-strewn concrete. When he had finished, he said he was ready to take us into Seoul.

Shortly after nine we rolled through the heavily guarded gates leading to KMAG headquarters. The shrilling whistles of black-garbed Korean MPs guided the converging streams of military traffic. Like the rest of Seoul, headquarters was blacked out.

"Not Very Good." The chief of staff's normally impeccable office had become a frowsy litter of coffee cups, cigarette butts, carbines and musette bags.

We talked with Lieut. Colonel W. H. Sterling Wright, a youngish, handsome cavalryman who, as chief of staff, was now KMAG's acting commander. Wright quickly explained the situation. "Fluid but hopeful" was the way he summed it up. Korean officers who entered the room were more pessimistic. Tall, round-faced Colonel Kim Pak II, ex-Japanese army captain, now generally accredited the Korean army's smartest staffman, shook hands with me warmly, but his usual cheerful manner had given way to worried tenseness. "Not very good . . . not very good."

Shortly before midnight we all turned in.

At 2:15 the telephone rang. We got a warning from headquarters. "It looks bad. I think they've broken through. You'd better get out of here as fast as you can. Head south for Suwon."

"Tuesday--Bingo." We decided to check in at KMAG headquarters for directions. There we found a major giving quiet instructions to a Korean staff officer. "It's bad," he said. "Tanks have broken into the city and we don't know how much longer the lines will hold. The enemy will be here any minute. I have to stay here until the colonel comes but you had better turn left at headquarters road and get across the bridge as soon as1 you can. Then make for Suwon."

We ran down the stairs. As we reached a landing my eyes fell on a bright new poster on the KMAG bulletin board. It read: "Don't forget--Tuesday, June 27--bingo."

Traffic was heavy on the road running south to the big steel Han River bridge. There were no signs of a military rout. Most soldiers, even those in retreat, were singing. Guided by MPs, automobiles kept strictly in line. The only disorder was outside the military line of march, among the thousands of poor refugees, women toting bundles on their heads and men carrying household goods in wooden frames fastened to their backs. The civilian composure noticed en route from Kimpo to Seoul had melted away.

Traffic moved quickly until we reached the bridge. There the pace slowed, then stopped. We found ourselves almost halfway over the bridge, our jeep wedged tightly between a huge six-by-six truck full of soldiers in front and other jeeps behind. The roar of guns from the north grew louder and we wondered how long the lines around Seoul would hold. We got out of the jeep and walked forward to find out what was delaying traffic. The milling crowds of civilians pouring over the bridge made that impossible. We returned to the jeep and sat waiting. Without warning the sky was lighted by a huge sheet of sickly orange flame. There was a tremendous explosion immediately in front of us. Our jeep was picked up and hurled 15 feet by the blast.

My glasses were smashed. Blood began pouring down from my head over my hands and clothing. Crane's face was covered with blood. I heard him say: "I can't see."

Thinking at first the explosion was some kind of air raid, we raced for the gullies leading off from the bridge, Beech leading

Crane, whose wound looked very bad. Crane ripped off his undershirt and had me tie a crude bandage around his head. As it turned out, neither of us was seriously hurt.

"You Take Hospital." All the soldiers in the truck ahead of us had been killed. Bodies of dead and dying were strewn over the bridge. Scores of refugees were running pell mell off the bridge and disappearing into the night beyond. Here we again noticed the pathetic trust the Koreans placed in the Americans. For ten minutes, as we rested on the grass, men with bloody faces would come to us, point to their wounds and say hopefully in English: "Hospital . . . you take hospital." All we could do was point to our own bloody faces and shake our heads.

At the time we thought that the bridge had been mined by saboteurs. We learned later that it had been dynamited by the South Korean army demolition squad on orders of the chief of staff. The Korean army command had panicked and ordered the bridge blown too soon. The demolition squad, instead of roping off the bridge at both ends, had incredibly told only the traffic in the middle what was about to happen.

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.

The Americans Had Come. Someone dragged me out of the jeep and began patting my back and shaking my hand. An old man knelt before me weeping and clasped his hands around my arm. All of us found ourselves swept into a sea of smiling faces. There was more clapping, more cheers. The Americans had come at last.

We were just as surprised as the Koreans. We had no idea whether the U.S. Government would have the guts to live up to its obligations here. At the same time we wondered if this was the beginning of World War III. But however mixed our emotions, the joy and relief of the Koreans were overpowering. For the first time in the long trip we felt we could hold up our heads among the Koreans.

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