No, he could not land just to let the correspondents off.
There were Americans on the field, some of them franti-cally waving jackets to attract the attention of the C-54.
It landed, and the correspondents found Air Force Lieu-tenant Colonel Peter Scott busily burning documents in Base Operations.
Scott told them things were not as bad as they could be. Seoul had not been abandoned, as reported, and in fact, on direct orders from General Douglas MacArthur, the sixty-odd officers of the Korean Military Advisory Group, and the hundred or so enlisted men attached to KMAG who had evacuated the city, were now in the process of moving back into it.
The journalists asked Colonel Scott how they could get into Seoul, which was seven miles away. He pointed to the parking lot, which was jammed with Jeeps, trucks, and civilian automobiles, including nine recent-model Buicks.
"Most of them have keys in their ignitions," Colonel Scott said.
The male journalists then chivalrously suggested to Miss Priestly that under the circumstances, it behooved her to return to Tokyo aboard the C-54 with the dependents be-ing evacuated, while they went into Seoul. This was really no place for a woman.
Miss Priestly replied with a short pungent sentence that certainly was not very ladylike, but made it clear that she considered herself one of the boys, and had no intention of running away from the story.
The journalists watched the C-54 take off for Tokyo and then climbed into a nearly new Buick and drove into Seoul, where they had little trouble finding the large gray building housing KMAG.
There, Colonel Sterling Wright-who told them he was acting KMAG commander; Brigadier General William Roberts, the former commanding general, having left for a new assignment in the States and no replacement for him having arrived-repeated what they had heard from Lieutenant Colonel Scott at Kimpo: Things weren't as black as they had at first appeared.
For proof of this, he showed them a radio teletype mes-sage from the Supreme Commander himself, which said: "Be of good cheer. Momentous events are pending."
Colonel Wright regretted that under the circum-stances-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 de-fense 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 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.