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"What about injuries?" the police officer asked, maybe thinking more about the incident report he had to fill out than about what to do with any casualties. But even as the military was waving off the civilian convoy, Dwyer could see small bodies being lifted on stretchers from the ground into army transport trucks. A couple of them were already in body bags, but one, not bagged, was strapped directly onto the stretcher. The police officer saw it, too. This one, Dwyer could tell, was moving around and seemed to be alive. He had to get closer. "Hey, get those things loaded, " the captain shouted at the enlisted men loading the stretchers into the truck. "You didn't see anything here tonight, Officer, "he told the driver of the police unit. "Nothing at all." "But, | gotta..." The captain cut him off. "Later today, I'm sure, there'll be someone from the base out to talk to the shift; meanwhile, let this one alone. Strictly military business. " the army airfield. He thought he could see the base intelligence officer, Jesse Marcel, who lived off" the base in Roswell, and other personnel who came into town on a regular basis. He saw debris from whatever had crashed still lying all over the ground as the flatbed truck pulled out, passed the fire apparatus, and rumbled off through the sand back on the road toward the base. Dwyer took off his fire helmet, climbed down from the truck, and worked his way through the shadows around the flank of the line of MPs. There was so much confusion at the site Dwyer knew no one would notice if he looked around. He walked around in back of the truck, across the perimeter, and from the other side of the military transport truck walked up to the stretcher. He looked directly down into the eyes of the creature strapped onto the stretcher and just stared. It was no bigger than a child, he thought. But it wasn't a child. No child had such an oversized balloon shaped head. It didn't even look human, although it had human like features. It's eyes were large and dark, set apart from each other on a downward slope. It's nose and mouth were especially tiny, almost like slits. And its ears were not much more than indentations along the sides of its huge head. In the glare of the floodlight, Dwyer could see that the creature was a grayish brown and completely hairless, but it looked directly at him as if it were a helpless animal in a trap. It didn't make a sound, but somehow Dwyer understood that the creature understood it was dying. He could gape in astonishment at the thing, but it was quickly loaded onto the truck by a couple of soldiers in helmets who asked him what he was doing. Dwyer knew this was bigger than anything he ever wanted to see and got out of there right away, losing himself amidst a group of personnel working around a pile of debris. The whole site was scattered with articles that Dwyer assumed had fallen out of the craft when it hit. He could see the indentation in the arroyo where it looked like the object embedded itself and followed with his eyes the pattern of debris stretching out from the small crater into the darkness beyond the floodlights. The soldiers were crawling all over on their hands and knees with scraping devices and carrying sacks or walking in straight lines waving metal detectors in front of them. They were sweeping the area clean, it seemed to him, so that any curiosity seekers who floated out here during the day would find nothing to reveal the identity of what had been here. Dwyer reached down to pick up a patch of a dull gray metallic cloth like material that seemed to shine up at him from the sand. He slipped it into his fist and rolled it into a hall. Then he released it and the metallic fabric snapped hack into shape without any creases or folds. He thought no one was looking at him, so he stuffed it into the pocket of his fire jacket to bring back to the firehouse. He would later show it to his young daughter, who forty-five years later and long after the piece of metallic fabric itself had disappeared into history, would describe it on television documentaries to millions of people. But that night in July 1947, if Dwyer thought he was invisible, he was wrong. "Well, you get your civilian ass back on that truck and get it the hell out of here, " he ordered. "You take anything with you?" "No injuries. We have everything under control, " the captain said. "What about them?" he asked. By this time Dwyer thought he recognized people he knew from "Hey you, "a sergeant wearing an MP armband bawled. "What the hell are you doing out here?" "| responded with the fire company, " Dwyer said as innocently as possible. "Not me, Sergeant, " Dwyer said.