proof of this, he showed them a radio teletype message from the Supreme Commander himself, which said: “Be of good cheer. Momentous events are pending.”
Colonel Wright regretted that under the circumstances—KMAG had just returned to Seoul; he would make improvements tomorrow—the only accommodations he could offer the distinguished members of the press would be rather spartan. The men would share quarters, as would he, with the senior officers of his staff, and he would turn over his own quarters to the lady.
Miss Priestly took a shower and went to bed in Colonel Wright’s narrow bed.
She was awakened in the very early hours of the next morning by an excited lieutenant who reported that the North Koreans had broken through the South Korean defense lines around Seoul, and that they were going to have to run for it.
Moments later, the North Koreans brought the KMAG compound under mortar fire.
Miss Priestly dressed quickly and went outside the building, where she found Colonel Wright waiting for her in a Jeep. Her fellow journalists, she was told, had already left.
Followed by another Jeep, they raced out of the KMAG compound toward the Han River. They had almost reached the river when a brilliant flash of light and a terrifying roar announced that the bridge had been blown.
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 obvious 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 Commander himself, and then a dozen general officers, and finally 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 American wire services and Time-Life—as the senior members of the Tokyo press corps. They were known by their fellows 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 underlings.
They had obviously been invited by MacArthur to accompany 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 their 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.”