arrived. In the air, Australian 77 Squadron Mustangs from Japan joined U.S. planes in action over the perimeter sector.
On August 29, the headquarters and two battalions of the 27th British Infantry Brigade arrived in Pusan from Hong Kong. An Australian ground force of nine hundred men, all "volunteers" and eager for action, either from Australia or from the Australian Infantry Battalion on Occupation duty in Japan, had arrived at Pusan by the end of September. These Diggers were to prove their worth in the fighting that lay ahead.
With the Australians in Korea related the error some North Koreans fell into of mistaking the argyle stocking caps the Aussies sometimes wore for Soviet Army headgear, and welcoming them, with "Russki! Russki!" The Commonwealth forces learned to utilize this mistake to advance openly into a Communist force, then fall on it with guns blazing.
In less than three weeks, the North Koreans had occupied nearly half of South Korea. On July 19, the Communists began attacking Taejon, where Dean had installed his 24th Division's headquarters. Trying to make up for his green troops, Poats reported, "General Dean was everywhere at once, firing rocket-launchers, dueling with Communists at pistol range, shifting and encouraging his men." By nightfall, Taejon was encircled and much of it was in Communist hands. The general led the last Americans on July 21 in a mad dash through the Communist lines toward Yongdong and freedom. When they were blocked, they took to the rice paddies. From that date, the general went "missing in action."
More than one year later, in September 1951, Bill Shinn learned from Korean sources that Dean had been betrayed by two South Korean civilians and captured by North Korean troops about five weeks after he disappeared. Australian Communist correspondent Wilfred Burchett confirmed later that Dean was a prisoner. Nothing more was heard about him until he was repatriated in 1953 in Operation Big Switch after the armistice was signed.
The 24th Division was shattered, but it had delayed the Communists for sixteen days. Its resistance gave the 25th, the 1st Cavalry Division, and marines time to arrive at the front and station themselves astride the main roads north and northwest of Taegu waiting for the North Koreans.
The tide of the fighting began to turn in the battle for No Name Ridge. In Police Action in Korea, Carl and Shelley Mydans put together from the accounts of Time-Life correspondents their picture of the war in Korea. The roads of eastern and central Korea were narrow and muddy, and the terrain mountainous, unsuited for the mechanized warfare and strafing air attacks of the U.N. forces. In August 1950, the U.S. Marines were ordered to take a barren ridge on the Naktong River front. It had no name on their maps, so they christened it No Name Ridge.
Correspondent James Bell was there. According to his story, carried in Police Action, the U.N. forces softened up the Reds by alternating artillery and air attacks before the marines began their assault. As they started up No Name Ridge, they were raked by machine guns, mortars, and automatic weapons. Men dropped all along the line. "The casualties seemed unthinkable, yet the assault force never turned back. It moved, fell down, got up and moved again." The battle continued for more than an hour. As the marines neared the crest, the Reds charged, throwing grenades. Some ten marines reached the northern crest. They fell, and the assault forces were ordered back. But the marines regrouped and charged again, and this time they carried No Name Ridge. "But the cost was terrible."
The U.N. forces under U.S. 8th Army Commander Walton Walker established a continuous defense perimeter to niches north of Pusan encompassing Taegu and Pohan and held off repeated North Korean attacks through August and early September. The overextended supply lines behind the Communist army failed to give them the support they needed to maintain the initiative.
By pinning down the North Koreans, these U.N. units gave MacArthur time for an amphibious landing at Inchon. It was a gamble, filled with risks, but it worked. Inchon relieved pressure on the Pusan Perimeter, and enabled General Walton's forces to push up the east coast toward the 38th parallel. On the west coast, the Inchon landing corps occupied Kimpo Airport. The U.N. forces moved on Seoul, occupying it on September 28. In bitter fighting, they pushed on past the 38th parallel, into Pyongyang, and beyond it.
The Press Club was boiling with activity. No more grousing about lack of news and things to do . . . or about finances either. It was like 1945 again, only more so, as correspondents and photographers came pouring in from America, Europe, and Asia to cover a war which officially was still a "U.N. police action" since none of the nations involved had declared war on the other side. Rooms in the Club were filled to overflowing.
Club membership reached an all-time peak of some 350 newsmen and women during the months following the North Korean invasion. One of the early July arrivals was the Denver Post's Bill Hosokawa. When he arrived in Tokyo, he went to the PRO office. "They told me hotel space was virtually nonexistent, and suggested I go to the Press Club in Shimbun Alley," he said. He found the Club "incredibly crowded. People were sleeping on cots set up in the library and elsewhere, but the food was good and inexpensive and the company congenial."
In Taegu, Bill found the correspondents billeted in an old Japanese schoolhouse, with twenty-five to thirty correspondents sleeping there. "Korea was hot and dusty, and we showered with cold water out of a hose outside the schoolhouse." After several weeks in Korea, Bill flew back to Tokyo for R&R. There, he had a cold milkshake, his "first hot shower in weeks," a haircut and a shampoo. "A great base for R&R, with pleasant and obliging staff and a lot of good company," Bill said.
When MacArthur promised the correspondents in 1945 that he would help them find a clubhouse, they promised "housing and feeding for legitimate working journalists" in Tokyo. "It may not be good housing or feeding but, at least, the newsman will have somewhere to live and work in." Hosokawa's experience was proof that the founding correspondents were as good as their word.
A popular and well-known newcomer was James Michener, famous for his many books including Tales of the South Pacific. Michener arrived in Tokyo on the way to Korea, and was promptly driven to No. 1 Shimbun Alley. In a No. 1 Shimbun article commemorating the Press Club's twentieth anniversary, he described the confusion at the Club. "I was thrown into one of the big rooms on the top floor," Michener wrote. "Eight men in space for two, not counting five Japanese girls. . . . The difficulty didn't arise from what you might think. Seems the girls had a habit of lugging in their own hibachis (charcoal braziers), running five separate kitchens and cooking fish heads with their rice.
"Those on the side of law and order, with whom I ranged myself since none of the girls was cooking meals for me, insisted that the hibachis, not the girls, must go . . . .The problem
