Just a few minutes after 8 a.m., the forward artillery observation post had seen eight tanks advancing down the road toward the 3rd Battalion. After presiding over the first exchange of fire between North Korean and American troops, Barth had come straight back and was heading for divisional headquarters with the all-important news that U.S. ground forces were now in action.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Military History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

It was just 8:30. What to do? Would the news make the newspapers I worked for in London or Australia that day? I decided that, because of the time differences, it would not. I would stay around for the action.

Others made different decisions, and our jeep went back to Taejon with Barth, leaving a couple of us without transport. We decided to walk toward Task Force Smith in the hope that someone else going in the same direction might give us a lift. Everyone was sure that the North Koreans were getting a trouncing. The optimism was not even muted by the discovery that the telephone link with Task Force Smith had broken down, a mishap attributed to rain. No one suspected enemy action.

The long line of trucks, jeeps, tradesman's vans and even an odd fire cart or two had thinned out since daylight, but the foot migration had multiplied. Following the narrow paths of clay that divided one level from another, people trudged in thousands for miles across the paddy fields. The road itself was covered with a mass of people–babies tied to their mothers' backs, old men and women bowed under crippling loads, and thousands of soldiers. More than anything else there were soldiers, outnumbering the civilians by about 10-to-1.

We had not walked more than a mile when a South Korean cavalryman, mounted on a horse about the size of a Shetland pony, came down the road, scattering the refugees, waving a sword and shouting excitedly, 'Tanku, tanku' ('Tanks'). His words panicked the refugees, who stumbled and fled. We shouted angrily at the man on ponyback, and went on our way. No sound came from the front, where Task Force Smith, we still believed, had sent the North Koreans in precipitate retreat.

We proceeded to the crest of one of the undulating hills, beyond the rice fields into well-cultivated vegetable land. For a moment there was peace. We only noticed that there were no longer any refugees. Then we saw the tank, there on the next crest, perhaps half a mile from us, moving steadily and majestically forward. It fired one round from its main armament, and, as we discovered later, about 100 machine-gun rounds. I have no idea where the shots went, or whether they were directed at us, my attention being fully directed to the problem of tactical withdrawal.

I hastened back breathlessly to Ayres' headquarters. Despite Barth's statement that eight tanks had been seen earlier, Ayres remained skeptical.

'There's a tank coming down the road,' I said.

'We don't have any tanks,' he replied.

'Not ours, theirs.'

He asked me to describe it, and I gave what was no doubt an exaggerated account.

'The bridges around here wouldn't take a tank of that size,' he said. Perhaps to humor me, he suggested that I might care to go with a bazooka team and show them where I had seen the tank.

So, this time in a jeep, my journalist companions and I sallied forth again, now accompanied by a bazooka team. We made our way cautiously, surveying the ground ahead and proceeding in a series of leaps and bounds. The rain pelted down. Though I drew my blanket around me, it soon became soaked. I was soon shivering with the cold, convinced that if I did not die from enemy action I would surely succumb to pneumonia.

We reached the spot where the tank had fired, collected the discarded shell case and measured the distance across the track marks–7 feet–all of which we felt might be of some intelligence significance to Ayres. It was not so much the caliber of the shell–about 76 millimeters–but the length of the casing that was impressive.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to