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the short distance to the sheriff's office, inspected the scraps, and was thoroughly puzzled by their unique appearance. He reported this to his commanding officer, Col. William "Butch" Blanchard, telling him of the field full of debris and of the odd characteristics of the pieces he had just seen. Blanchard reacted quickly, ordering Major Marcel to get someone from the Counter-intelligence Corps office and pro- ceed to the ranch with Brazel. They were ordered to collect as much of the material as they could load into their two vehicles and bring it back to the airbase. Soon after this, military police converged on the sheriff's office, took possession of the scraps Brazel had left there, and delivered them to Blanchard's office. Testimony from several enlisted men points to the material then being flown to Eighth Air Force headquarters in Fort Worth, Tex., and from there to Washington, per specific instructions. Someone had obviously informed Washington that something important was going on ar ae Meanwhile, Marcel and CIC captain Cavitt arrived at the Foster ranch late Sunday night, having struggled over terrible roads and some stretches where they had to drive cross- country. They spent the night in sleeping bags in a small build- ing and in the morning were taken by Mac Brazel to the place he had found the material. In 1979, Jesse Marcel described his When we arrived at the crash site, it was amazing to see the vast amount of area it covered. It was nothing that hit the ground or exploded [on] the ground. It's something that must have exploded above ground, traveling perhaps at a high rate of speed ... we don't know. But it scattered over an area of about three quarters of a mile long, I would say, and fairly wide, several hundred feet wide. So we proceeded to pick up all the fragments we could find and load up our Jeep Carry-All. It was quite obvious to me, [from my] familiarity] with air activities, that it was not a weather balloon, nor was it an airplane or a missile. What was it, we didn't know. We just picked up the fragments. It was something I had never seen before, and I was pretty familiar with all air THE MILITARY TAKESOVER 99 in New Mexico. experience: