Nostalgia: Old Men, Old War

Old men we were--many of us in our 80s now--back where, a half-century earlier, we were reporters and photographers covering that often unremembered Korean War. On our arrival for the anniversary celebration, Seoul was plastered with slogans commemorating the war's outbreak and expressing the nation's gratitude to the 16 countries--from North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa--member states of the United Nations that came to South Korea's defense after North Korea attacked. Six of those countries were represented in our group. On our return to the peninsula in late June, we were given a lavish welcome--almost too lavish, considering that we had been only reporting, not fighting. Yet 18 correspondents did die in the war, and seeing their names memorialized in bronze evoked thoughts of the luck that had saved us from having our own names listed there too--a ride not taken in a jeep that hit a mine, killing two correspondents; the shuttle back from Japan not boarded that went down in the sea, killing another.

For each of us, the war began differently: the correspondents who rushed over from Japan and then had to share a single Army telephone line to get their stories out; the veteran photographer eager to go, who was told by his editors to forget it since the war would be over in a week. For me, the Korean War began in my backyard. Before becoming a TIME correspondent, I was with the American embassy in Seoul, and on Sunday morning of June 25, 1950, I'd been trying to get a patch of grass growing outside the Japanese-style house where I lived with my wife and three small children when a breakfast-time call came to get in to the office quickly. By midafternoon, trucks loaded with South Korean soldiers holding branches over their heads, as if those sprigs could camouflage them from enemy aircraft, were lumbering through Seoul's dusty, potholed streets. And by nightfall, evacuation of embassy families had begun. Fortuitously, a Norwegian freighter with accommodations for 12 passengers lay at anchor in the seaport of Inchon. Crammed into the ship's hold as it sailed the next morning for safety in Japan were a couple of hundred women and children, including missionary wives and others. Everything in the world that my wife and I owned--clothing, furniture, books, pictures--was there in Korea. She packed mainly diapers. Remembering tales of what her Georgia ancestors had done as General Sherman's army approached, she briefly considered burying the silverware but then wisely packed it too.