Early in the morning on June 28, 1950, three war correspondents were about to cross the Han River Highway Bridge when it suddenly exploded in a deafening ball of destruction. They described it as:
“Lit only by the glow of the burning truck and occasional headlights, was apocalyptic in frightfulness. All of the soldiers in the truck ahead of us had been killed. Bodies of dead and dying were strewn over the bridge, civilians as well as soldiers. Confusion was complete. With the cries of the wounded and the dying forming the background, scores of refugees were running pell-mell off the bridge and disappearing into the night beyond. It was here that we first noticed the pathetic trust that the Koreans had placed in Americans. For ten minutes 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.”
The rest of the article - including several nice photographs of the bridge from my collection can be seen here.
5 Comments
I can thoroughly recommend the book this essay comes from, ‘Korea Witness - 135 years of war, crisis and news in the land of the morning calm’, edited by Donald Kirk and Choe Sang Hun (yes, he of the recent way-off-the-mark beef protest articles in the IHT). Bought it at Kyobo a few weeks back and devoured it in a couple of days.
#1 Yes, an excellent synopsis through the eyes of Korean and Western journalists of the major events to occur in Korea up to a few years ago. I stayed wide awake on the flight back to Dubai last summer because of this book.
Dumb bombs have the edge.
It should be noted that the photos showing American “soldiers” (actually, US Marines) near the bridge would all have been taken after the Incheon invasion. On 28 Jun 1950, total U.S. forces numbered some 500 from the Korean Military Advisory Group, spread all over the country with Korean military units, and whatever advance parties the main forces in Japan had sent in.
In re: “South Korea and its allies did prove to be victorious but at a horrible cost to the Korean people.”
True, but at not as horrible cost as it would have been had the NORKs been victorious.