not right away. Except for the little orange flames and some smoke curling from the pilot's window everything was quiet. It was getting along toward sunset. It seemed rather strange but as the sun sank lower the flames climbed higher. Smoke started coming out of the broken cabin windows and we could see the fire inside glowing brighter. The cabin fire burned through windows and up through the astrodome, then gushed into the cockpit. The front end of the plane was soon entirely aflame. Its nose burned off, the great tail flukes rose slowly against the evening sky and the right wing tanks exploded. Going back toward the little town which was Suwon, our progress was brought to an almost complete halt by the rivers of refugees funneling south along the road. Although no North Korean planes had started strafing the road, no one knew when it might begin. Under cover of darkness it seemed as though the entire population of Korea was afoot. Vehicles of all descriptions plowed through the crowds, most of them heavily camouflaged with branches and all packed to bursting with men, most of them of the South Korean Army and police force. There was little evidence of panic yet less of leadership. They just seemed to be caught in the crush of voiceless people plodding south down the road. That afternoon at the railroad station I had photographed them as they festooned themselves all over the train, covering every inch of its steel length. They presented a pathetic but now everyday picture, different from others made in Greece, Palestine, India or China only in that they were all rather well dressed and spotlessly clean. These were not poverty-stricken peasants headed from an uncertain past to a less certain future, but the entire people of that section of Korea where life had been casual and full-stomached. Yet even with that life being demolished around them and the knowledge that at the end of the road south there lay nothing but the sea, they still were making their flight in quiet dignity. And I felt embarrassed as I worked among them, especially in my knowledge that I could always get out, somehow. When I came upon an ancient 26 l Ⅲ. Korea 1950 This is War!
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