While the battle progressed in and around the church, bullets clanged off the large bell that hung on a wooden beam outside the edifice. When the firing began to subside, four brave Korean civilians climbed the tower and tiptoed onto the beam. They stood “boldly against the sky, swinging the bell,” wrote Marguerite Higgins, and it resonated “clearly over the racket of the battle…a strange, lovely sound there in the burning city.” The bell ringers crawled down, and one of them explained to the American troops, “That was for thank you.”
