Waifs of War

Said a grimy G.I.: "I keep thinking of my three kids at home and hoping that somebody would take care of them, if what is happening here should happen in America."

At Inchon, 964 Korean orphans and other waifs of war, aged six months to eleven years, were waiting to be taken to an island off the South Korean coast. Some of the older ones were too weak from starvation to walk, or too sick (e.g., with scabies, whooping cough, tuberculosis). They were to have been settled in a children's refuge at Seoul, but U.N. reverses caused that plan to be abandoned.

The ship scheduled to take the children from Inchon to the island last week failed to arrive. Lieut. Colonel R. L. Blaisdell, chaplain of the Fifth Air Force, telephoned the Combat Cargo Command. Promptly, 15 C-54s loaded with rations for 15 days were dispatched to Kimpo Airport and the children were trucked there from Inchon. They and their 80 attendants, mostly Korean women, were flown off to their island sanctuary.

Air Force Nurse Mary Wilfong showed signs of weeping. "Taking care of the wounded isn't a pleasant job always," she said, "but it never hit me like this. Those kids were so helpless and so pitiful."

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