Word: taejon
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Hardly were the stand-or-die orders out of General Walker's mouth (see above) than the U.S. forces began to give more ground. Kochang fell, on the central front, and Kumchon, an important strongpoint on the Taejon-Taegu railroad, was threatened from the southeast. At Chinju on the south coast, after a heavy fight in which Communist dead littered the ground "like confetti," the defenders pulled back and two Red regiments rushed in. Chinju, 55 miles from Pusan, was the closest Communist approach to the all-important supply port...
...flying weather, Superforts raided Seoul's railroad marshaling yards, interrupting traffic from the north to the southern battlefront, and blasted industrial targets near the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. From a secret U.S. airbase built in four days, F80 Shooting Star jets attacked tanks and transports around Taejon; the highway northeast of Taejon was lined with burning vehicles. Other U.S. planes attacked Communist engineers who were trying to repair destroyed bridges across the Kum River...
Toward week's end, the Red air force cautiously reappeared. Over Taejon, four patrolling U.S. F-80s met four Yak fighters, shot down three; other Yaks tried to intercept U.S. B-29s on their mission to Seoul, giving them, in the words of a U.S. briefing officer, "a pretty good scrap." Airfields previously deserted were again abustle with Red aircraft...
Fielder joined the ground forces in Korea, went up to Taejon. Last week, as the burning city fell to the Communists, a convoy of U.S. vehicles fought its way out, under orders to stop for no one. According to the driver of one jeep, Wilson Fielder was riding in the back seat with a G.L, when a burst of machine-gun fire hit them both and knocked them out of the jeep. Obeying orders, the driver said, he kept going...
...were other, conflicting versions of what happened; the Communist Pyongyang Radio, which had falsely claimed the capture of two other correspondents earlier in the fighting, reportedly announced that Correspondent Fielder had been taken prisoner. At week's end, as stragglers continued to make their way out of the Taejon pocket and back to U.S. lines, there was no final word of Wilson Fielder's fate: he was listed only as "missing in action." He was the sixth U.S. newsman to be listed as a battle casualty in the war in Korea...