이것이 전쟁이다! planes were pouring oil from multiple holes, and definitely out of commission. The question of their salvage was settled the next day when two near misses by northern bombs blew them apart. That afternoon of June 28 found us alone on a battered four-thousand-foot airfield near an almost unknown Korean town. Our only company was the pair of punctured planes. We had just found the headquarters when firing overhead drove everyone to cover. Four Yaks had sneaked down at the moment when the U.S. fighter cover had returned to Japan and before its replacement arrived. At that very instant a C-54 transport came in to land. Two Yaks closed in for the kill, machine guns hammering out slugs all the way down in their dives. The 54 pilot must have seen the enemy planes, for he took off across the rice paddies, harvesting next season's crop as he went. Later, back in GHQ, I learned that he had flown out of the trap, the plane was sieved, but not one man aboard was wounded. Another Yak dive-bombed the strip. Two explosions rocked the headquarters. Starting out in a jeep for the airfield to check on the damage, Lambert and I found an Air Force captain strolling down the road. He crawled into the back seat, then turned and said, “Jesus Christ! You know, I've never been shot at before!” It turned out that he was the pilot of another C-54 the Yaks had caught on the runway. Somehow he had gotten out of the plane and half a mile away without any apparent effort at all. At the field we found two good-sized bomb craters in one end of the runway and the C-54 dripping gasoline from her left wing tanks. The pilot hopped out of the jeep, went over to his plane, then sprinted back into the paddies. It was very perplexing. I had nearly passed the nose when something caught my eye up in the sunlight on the right wing, and I nearly tore the gears out of the poor old jeep. The leading edge of the wing was in flames. The rubber de-icer was burning in little orange curls of fire. The strafing had riddled the left wing but bomb fragments had hit the right. She seemed doomed so I found a good camera position in the field off the strip and waited for her to explode. She didn't, at least Ⅲ. Korea 1950 l 25
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