RETREAT FROM TAEJON

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27450, 25 July 1950, Page 5

RETREAT FROM TAEJON

Tales Of Terror From Burning Korean City NO WORE) OF MISSING GENERAL From Denis Warner, New Zealand Press Association-Reuter Correspondent in Korea. Rec. 9 p.m. TOKIO, July 24. About 500 American soldiers have come over the hills to swell the numbers of escapees from Taejon, but their gallant leader, Majorgeneral William Dean, who personally directed the final defence of the burning city last Thursday, was not among them. Hopes have not been abandoned, however. The battle flowed swiftly past Taejon and on Saturday Communists and Americans skirmished 15 miles to the south-east. The general, if he escaped under darkness on Thursday, would have been faced with a long and arduous march across rugged mountains to his own lines. He was known to be safe, preparing to fight his way out, on Thursday night. His Korean interpreter, who left just ahead of General Dean, brought word of that. General Dean then had about 100 men defending the two-storey wooden headquarters’ building in the north-western sector of Taejon.

Night was not much help because of the light from the burning city, but it helped to prevent Koreans massing to storm the building. None of that group has yet come in, but others add their own threads of terror to the tale of Taejon.

One survivor of a first aid station in Taejon was an orderly, who stayed with the doctor and padre to mind the incapacitated wounded. Men cried out when they saw the others leaving and they struggled to get off their stretchers to go too.” He said: “The Roman Catholic chaplain, who tossed with the Baptist for the right

last war as associated with prolonged exposure to artillery fire. His story was of the Korean’s fifth column of refugees trudging into Taejon, bent under heavy bundles on their backs and disappearing into apparently deserted houses. When the time came they threw down the shutters and appeared in hordes with machine-guns and rifles. He said the North Koreans dressed like the South Koreans and you never knew a friend from a foe. The Red Cross refuge for wounded has gone from the war now. Ambulances moving to the front today all have the much distinguishing cross removed. It was too useful as a target for the North Koreans. Refugees are being cleared from the battlefront also. By leaflets dropped from aircraft through , the Korean police and counter-intelligence agents, the Americans spread word that the designated battle area henceforth would be considered closed. They have provided trains to evacuate towns along the Taejon-Taegu line that may become immediate battlefields. These will be closed areas. Those who enter them do so at the risk of their lives. The men in white on the hilltops have watched and reported and fired on the Americans for the last time. No more peasants lug guns and ammunition it* rice bags. But for the genuine refugee, it means genuine hope, salvation and the end to the long pitiful hungry sick line I have watched trekking south almost from the outskirts of Seoul.

to stay behind, told the men that they would be alright, the ’ Koreans don’t kill unarmed wounded,' he said, but the Communists came and killed everyone, and first of all. the chaplain.” The doctor was wounded in the butchery, but he and the orderly scrambled away and escaped. The others all died. A major I first met at Pyngtaek. then chubby-faced and bright-eved, stopped in his jeep, when he saw me today. His face is thin now. and his eve s have a look I remember in the