James M. Cannon, a neophyte Sun reporter at the time, was remembering the other day how he pulled off a coup 60 years ago that freed him forever from the daily drudgery of local reporting and left his newsroom colleagues smarting with envy and wondering why they hadn't been so forward.
The Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when communist North Korean forces swept into the Republic of South Korea, and a day later, Cannon made his own invasion of sorts.
He screwed up his courage and walked into the small office of Bill Perkinson, assistant to Neil H. Swanson, who was the fearsome, no-nonsense executive editor of the Sunpapers, and asked to be sent to Korea.
What made this presumptuous move seem almost more ridiculous was that Cannon, who had been born and raised in Sylacauga, Ala., wasn't actually a seasoned reporter with a lot of newspaper experience under his belt.
The University of Alabama graduate, who had served with the Army for five years during World War II, had been a reporter for two years after the end of the war for the Potsdam, N.Y., Herald-Recorder. He then worked for the Gloversville, N.Y., Leader-Republican for a year before joining The Sun's local staff in 1949.
"We were in the old Sun building at Baltimore and Charles streets," Cannon, 92, recalled the other day in a telephone interview from his Washington home.
"I was a general assignment reporter and had covered City Hall for a short time, and when the Korean War broke out, I contrived to get sent overseas. I think it was the most transparent thing I've ever done," he said, with a hearty laugh.
He recalled that it was 9 a.m. Monday, June 26, 1950, when he arrived at Perkinson's office.
"I walked into Perkinson's office, which was right next to Swanson's. The Sun was so cheap that the partitions didn't go all the way up to the ceiling," Cannon said.
"So, gambling that Swanson might be on the other side listening, I spoke in a loud voice and told Perkinson I wanted to go to Korea," Cannon said. "He said he'd mention it to Swanson."
Cannon then returned to the city room where a little while later, Charles H. "Buck" Dorsey Jr., who was managing editor of The Sun, summoned the ambitious 32-year-old reporter.
"Buck said he'd spoken to Swanson and then said, 'We'll send you,'" Cannon said.
"I didn't go to Korea directly. Swanson sent me to Europe first. I was in London and Paris for a couple of weeks, then with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean. Then I got a message from Swanson that I was to proceed at once to Korea," he said.
Cannon said his journey by Pan American World Airways took him from Rome and onto Athens, Istanbul, Damascus, Delhi, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo.
Sun correspondent Philip Potter, who was the first Sun correspondent to reach the war zone, was recuperating in a Tokyo hospital after being shot in the leg by enemy gunfire.
A few days later, another Sun correspondent, William D. Blair Jr., was wounded by a Korean sniper.
"I visited Potter, who was our bureau chief, in the hospital, and he said, 'For God sakes, don't get shot,'" Cannon said,
In addition to his typewriter, the ever-resourceful Cannon included a well-stocked traveling bar in his kit, whose various alcoholic beverages he used to put sources at ease and hopefully make them a bit more convivial and talkative.
"Whiskey is always the best medium of exchange and it was especially so in Korea," said Cannon, with a laugh. "A couple of bottles of whiskey got a Jeep for The Sun and one more got it painted."
He recalled the retreat from the Yalu River as being one of his most harrowing experiences during the 18 months he covered the war.
"We were about 20 miles from the river on a two-lane dirt road. We had stopped to eat lunch when a spotter plane dropped a message to our colonel, who was in the lead Jeep. The message said that we had been ordered to retreat immediately and to return to our base at Anju," he said.
"He thought it was a trick. Commanders were very competitive but then we were told to 'Get the hell back and right away,' because Chinese troops had been spotted in the hills behind us and were about to cut us off," he said.
Trying to make his way to corps' headquarters, Cannon found the road jammed with retreating vehicles trying to get back to the south.
"The Chinese Reds advanced through the hills and mountains with surprising swiftness, getting behind rear guards to lay small arms and mortar fire on roads already choked with traffic," wrote Cannon in a dispatch that was published in The Sun on Dec. 2, 1950.
Chaos reigned and at one point, Cannon said, trucks were blocked bumper to bumper for 20 miles, while at a clearing, some 50 wounded soldiers waited to be transported to an air strip for evacuation.
"But there was no panic," Cannon wrote. "There was a sense of urgency, the fear of being cut off, but no panic."
Cannon, who went several days without sleep, dutifully reported the reactions of the soldiers around him.
"'They got my buddy with a burp gun.' 'Our lieutenant got his leg blowed off.' 'They blew bugles. They got in behind us.' 'They infiltrated. They cut us off.' 'They opened up. They let us have it,'" he wrote.
"I wrote for a 14-hour stretch. [Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who was United Nations commander] wasn't admitting what had happened. I think I was one of the first reporters to get the message out about what had happened," Cannon said.
Cannon flew to Japan and then hitched a ride back to Korea on the carrier USS Princeton.
"I wanted to get back because we were evacuating from the Northeast," he said.
Cannon recalled Christmas Eve of 1950.
"I spent it climbing up the side of a ship on a rope ladder with my typewriter strapped to my back," he said, with a laugh.
In 1951, Cannon returned to Baltimore and a $90-a-week paycheck, despite having been a war correspondent. He remained on The Sun staff until 1954, when he became a contributing editor for Time magazine.
"The Sun was a wonderful place to work even though the pay was poor, and I loved working for Buck Dorsey," he said.
"But by 1955, I had a second child coming and was offered a job by Newsweek," Cannon said. "I remember telling Dan Meara [an assistant Sun managing editor] that my pay would be $9,000 a year, and he couldn't believe making that much money in his lifetime."
His 13-year Newsweek career included serving as national affairs editor, Washington correspondent, chief of correspondents, and vice president and assistant to the publisher.
From 1969 to 1973, Cannon was special assistant to New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, and later served on Rockefeller's staff during his vice presidency.
He was assistant to President Gerald R. Ford for domestic affairs and was director of the Domestic Council during the Ford administration. In 1981, he was chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker.
His book "Time and Chance: Gerald Ford's Appointment with History" was published in 1994.
Cannon is still busy writing. He said he is three-fourths finished with a book to be published by the University of Michigan Press on Ford's accomplishments and "what he failed to accomplish."