It is funny.
The refugees don't complain. They don't whimper. They are too tired for that. Too tired, too stunned and too busy keeping themselves staggering along under the burden of bedding and rice on their backs.As you roll down the withdrawal roads in a jeep, you get a series of flashed pictures of the plight. Your are forced inexorably along by the mass of vehicular movement. You don't stop because that would snarl up the jeep and truck convoys behind you.
It's like being on a train and gazing at tragedy out the window and not being able to get out and talk to the people involved or do anything about it.
We had seen the thousands of refugees leaving Seoul afoot and wondered where they would find places to sleep along the way.
"Now you know where they sleep." a man in our jeep said.
Many slept by the roadside. Their white-clad bodies flashed by in the night. They lay close together for warmth. They just stopped walking and dropped in their tracks when night came on.[snip]
And some kept on walking, shuffling painfully thru the night, handkerchiefs pressed against nose and mouth to sift the choking clouds of dust raised by the traffic.
We passed a dead man lying on the roadway. He was on his side with his legs bent at the knees, as if he had laid down and died of cold or starvation.
The cars of the convoys swerved around the body as they passed.
As our headlights played on the big trucks in front of us, swaying under their load of humanity and baggage like a ship with too much cargo topside, it was hard to see how all the refugees managed to hang on.
The baggage was heaped up sometimes 10 feet higher than the cab top and the men, women, and children riding backwards to shield their faces from the stinging cold wind, covered every inch of the baggage.
The trains were incredible. You had to look back after you had passed to make sure of the sight you had just seen. You couldn't believe that many people could be on them. They were heaped even on the tops of the freight cars and on the flatcars. They covered the engine, stood on the cowcatcher and hung on the sides of the cab.
And once we came upon tragedy compounded. A truck leaded with refugees had lurched and pitched off the side of a culvert. The hood and front wheels had dug into the bed of a shallow stream. The rear of the truck still rested on the covert edge at road level.
The refugees had been hurled into the stream bed. Most of them were soaking wet and were in danger of freezing. It was daylight and the traffic had thinned. We stopped.
The refugees were moaning on the ground. A Korean policeman who had come by on a bicycle was arguing loudly with the truck driver. We promised to notify the next police station to send back help, but we knew that every police station had its hands full.
As we left, the policeman was standing in the road blowing his whistle futilely at other refugee trucks to get help. They passed without even slowing down,.