Early in the morning the EUSAK commanding general was on the road, waving his arms in an attempt to stop ROK soldiers streaming rearward in their vehicles after abandoning crew-served weapons. The short training period for these troops, their tactical inexperience, and the language barrier were the dissonant notes tolling the ominous chords of defeat. The whole front was endangered as the enemy poured through an ever widening gap, and Ridgway ordered that roadblocks be set up where MPs could halt the fugitives, rearm them, and send them back to the front. At his request, President Syngman Rhee appealed to ROK soldiers over the radio and exhorted them to make a stand. By that time it was too late to save Seoul, and the commanding general gave orders for its evacuation. “The withdrawal was initiated in mid-afternoon on the 3d,” he commented in retrospect, “I stayed on the bridge site on the north bank until dark to watch the passage of the most critical loads. These were the 8-inch howitzers and the British Centurion tanks, both of which exceeded the safety limits of the bridge under the conditions existing at the time.”[28] [28] Gen M. B. Ridgway, ltr of 5 Jun 57. It was a scene of terror and despair that Ridgway never forgot. Thousands of Korean civilian refugees were making their way over the thin ice of the river Han, many of them carrying children or old people on their backs. What impressed the observer most was the uncanny silence of this mass flight in the freezing winter dusk, broken only by the sound of a multitude of feet shuffling over the ice--a sound strangely like a vast whispering. It was as if these derelicts of war were trying incoherently to confide their misery to someone. From a strategic viewpoint, the only course left to the Eighth Army was a continued retirement south of Seoul. “We came back fast,” Ridgway admitted, “but as a fighting army, not as a running mob. We brought our dead and wounded with us, and our guns, and our will to fight.”[29] [29] Ridgway, _Memoirs_, 215. _Further Eighth Army Withdrawals_ EUSAK Fragmentary Operations Plan 20, issued as an order on 4 January, called for a further withdrawal to Line D (Map 4). In preparation, X Corps had moved up to the front on the 2d, after assuming operational control of the U.S. 2d and 7th Infantry Divisions and the ROK 2d, 5th, and 8th Divisions and occupied a sector between U.S. IX Corps and ROK III Corps.[30] [30] EUSAK _Cmd Rpt_, Jan 51, 9, 62, 64, 82, 92. The U.S. 3d Division was attached to I Corps and the 187th Airborne RCT passed temporarily under operational control of IX Corps.