Griffin W.E.B. - The Corps 09 - Under Fire

Their only escape route to Suwon, thirty miles south of Seoul, where there was an air base, had been cut.

Colonel Wright drove back to the KMAG compound, where he assembled a sixty-vehicle convoy of stragglers and started out to find another way across the Han to safety. After several hours of frantic search, none was found. But they came across a place where small boats could take them across the river.

Wright ordered the vehicles destroyed, and the fleeing Americans made it across the river, and started for Suwon on foot.

About eleven o'clock in the morning, there was a growing roar of aircraft engines. After a few moments, it was possible to identify the aircraft as USAF P-51 fighters. They were obviously strafing Kimpo Airfield, with the ob-vious conclusion to be drawn that if the P-51s were strafing it, it was now in the hands of the North Koreans.

After a four-hour walk, a Jeep appeared, and Miss Priestly accepted the offer of a ride in it to Suwon. There she found her fellow journalists, two of them wearing bloody bandages. They had been on the Han River bridge when it had been blown.

There were a number of American aircraft on the field, one of which was headed for Itazuke Air Force Base in Japan, the closest one to Korea. All four journalists climbed aboard. There was no way that any of them could file their stories of the fall of Seoul from Suwon, and two of them required medical attention.

All four filed their stories from Itazuke. The two wounded men then went to the hospital, and Miss Priestly and the unwounded other one got on another plane headed back to Suwon.

The next morning, as Miss Priestly was trying to find a Jeep or something else with wheels to go see the fighting, a glistening C-54 made an approach to Suwon and landed. When she saw that it had "Bataan" lettered on its nose, she ran to get a closer look.

Thompson submachine gun-armed military policemen climbed down the stairs, followed by the Supreme Com-mander himself, and then a dozen general officers, and fi-nally four members of the press corps.

Jeanette Priestly knew all of them. They regarded themselves-perhaps not without some justification; they were the Tokyo bureau chiefs of the three major Ameri-can wire services and Time-Life-as the senior members of the Tokyo press corps. They were known by their fel-lows in the press corps as "The Palace Guard" because they covered the Supreme Commander himself, leaving coverage of whatever else happened in Japan to their un-derlings.

They had obviously been invited by MacArthur to ac-company him to Korea-"space available" did not apply to the Supreme Commander's personal aircraft; passage on the Bataan was by invitation only.

If the members of the Palace Guard were surprised to see Jeanette Priestly in Korea, it did not register on then-faces. But the Supreme Commander himself smiled when he saw her, and motioned her over to him.

There's a headline if there ever was one, Jeanette thought: MACARTHUR IN KOREA.

But how do I get the story out?

"Good morning, Jeanette," he said, offering her his hand. "I wasn't aware that you were here."

"I came yesterday," Jeanette said, and blurted, "and was almost caught in Seoul."

"Seoul will, I am sure, soon be rid of the invader," MacArthur said.

A battered sedan, a Studebaker, not nearly as nice as the Buicks Jeanette had seen deserted at Kimpo, drove up, and Colonel Sidney Huff walked up to them.

"The car is here, General," he said.

"Jeanette, if you would like to wait until I have a chance to assess the situation here," Douglas MacArthur said, "you may, if you like, ride back to Tokyo with me on the Bataan."

`Thank you," Jeanette said. "That's very kind of you."

I can file from Tokyo just as quick as the Palace Guard can.

"Not at all," MacArthur said. "For the time being, at least, this is no place for a lady."

Jeanette had another unladylike thought, but managed to smile as dazzlingly as possible at him. And then she smiled dazzlingly at the Palace Guard, who were reacting to her being on the Bataan as if she were a whore in church.

She waited until MacArthur's small convoy had driven off, and then sat down on the grass by the side of the run-way, took her Royal portable typewriter out, and began to type.

FOR CHITRIB

PRESS IMMEDIATE

NOTE TO EDITOR AP, UP AND INS WILL HAVE PICS

SLUG MACARTHUR COMES TO KOREA

BY JEANETTE PRIESTLY, TRIBUNE WAR COR-RESPONDENT SUWON, SOUTH KOREA JUNE 27-THE REMAINS OF AN AIR FORCE C54 DESTROYED BY NORTH KOREAN YAK FIGHTERS WERE STILL SMOLDERING WHEN THE BATAAN, THE GLISTENING C54 OF SUPREME COMMAN-DER GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR, TOUCHED DOWN AT THIS BATTERED AIRFIELD 30 MILES SOUTH OF THE JUST CAPTURED SOUTH KOREAN CAPITAL OF SEOUL THIS AFTER-NOON. WEARING HIS FAMILIAR BATTERED CAP AND A FUR-COLLARED LEATHER JACKET, HIS CORN-COB PIPE PERCHED JAUNTILY IN HIS MOUTH, GENERAL OF THE ARMY DOUGLAS MACARTHUR CONFIDENTLY PREDICTED TO THIS REPORTER THAT SEOUL WILL SOON BE RID OF THE INVADER.

She looked up from the portable, saw that the Palace Guard had somehow found a Jeep and were obviously in-tending to join the MacArthur convoy.

She slammed the cover shut on the Royal, jumped to her feet, and ran to it. She climbed over the rear seat just as it started to move.

"Yes, thank you," Jeanette said, beaming. "I would like to go along."

[FIVE]

WASHINGTON, D.C.

0905 26 JUNE 1950

The President of the United States came out the front door of Blair House, almost jauntily descended the stairway, and indicated with a nod of his head that he was going to turn right.

Two of the six Secret Service agents on the detail quickly took up positions so that they could precede him; two waited to bring up the tail; and two positioned them-selves so that they would be just a few steps behind him. Across the street, two Chevrolet Suburbans started their engines. One moved ahead of the little parade and the sec-ond positioned itself behind the tail.

The Secret Service agent heading the parade turned and looked questioningly at the President.

"The Foster Lafayette," the President said. "Senator Fowler."

"Thank you, sir," the Secret Service agent said. Senator Richardson K. Fowler maintained a suite in the Foster Lafayette. Not an ordinary suite, though God knew suites in the Lafayette were large and elegant as they came, but an apartment made up of two suites, and furnished, the President had learned, with museum-quality antiques.

Fowler was quite wealthy, and unlike some of his peers in the Senate, made no effort at all to conceal it. He con-sidered public service a privilege, and living in Washing-ton, D.C, even as well as he did, as the terrible price he had to pay for that privilege.

The President walked briskly, three times tipping his white Panama straw hat and smiling and waving to people on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue who recognized him. The Foster Lafayette Hotel was directly across Pennsyl-vania Avenue from the White House, the far side-from Blair House-of Lafayette Square. The general manager of the hotel was standing under the marquee beside the doorman, obviously waiting for the President.

The Secret Service agent in the lead again turned and looked questioningly at the President.

"I guess when I invited myself to breakfast, Senator Fowler told him," the President said.

The President shook hands with both the general man-ager-and called him by name-and the doorman, entered the hotel, walked across the lobby to a waiting elevator, and followed the lead two Secret Service agents onto it.

When the elevator reached the top floor, the President saw that a large, very black man wearing a gray cotton jacket and a wide smile was standing by the open door of Senator Fowler's suite.

"Good morning, Mr. President," he said. "Nice to see you again, sir. The senator's waiting for you."