Nexus - 0203 - New Times Magazine-pages

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UFO’S - ROSWELL REVISITED over after seeing what they thought was a fiery meteor crashing the _ lized.” Anderson has an especially vivid memory of a tough-talk- night before. ing red haired Army captain and an equally gruff black sergeant. The professor, a Dr. Buskirk, tried several foreign languages in “They told my dad and my uncle, who also worked at Sandia, that unsuccessful attempts to coax a verbal response from the creature, if they were ever to divulge anything about this - it was a secret Anderson says. The sun had climbed to a midday peak by this time —_ military aircraft, they said - then us kids would be taken away and so he sought shelter in the shadow of the spacecraft. “It was 115 _ they’d never see us again.” (degrees) out there that day, but around the craft, when you got It seems an outrageous threat in hindsight, Anderson concedes. close to it, it was cold. When you touched the metal, it felt just like But at the time, he reminds, “These people had machine guns and it came out of a freezer.” Anderson also touched one of the crea- —_- you listened to what they said.” tures lying motionless on the ground - and it, too was cold. Another recollection strikes Anderson as odd today: The sol- A pickup truck arrived on the ridge, and a fellow whom _ diers didn’t appear surprised about the otherwordly craft and crea- researchers believe was a civil engineer named Barney Barnett tures. they didn’t gawk, slack-jawed and awe-struck as the joined the curious audience. “I remember thinking he looked like | Andersons had done. They were very cognizant of what they were Harry Truman. In 1947, every kid knew what Harry Truman __ looking at, and it soon became apparent, Anderson says, that the looked like,” Anderson says. Army knew what it wanted to do with the find. “there was a bat- After a few minutes, Anderson summoned the courage to again _talion of military, a real invasion force, when we got back up on creep close to the strange the hilltop. saucer. It was then more chill- “ There were trucks, there were air- ing than the surface of the craft The y to Id m y dad and planes - they had the road blocked of the skin of the corpse; The i off and they were landing on it. upright creature turned and my unc le ?, that ! f the y They had radio communications looked right at me and it was were ever to divul ge gear set up. There were ambu- like he was inside my head, as an yt hin ga bout this - lances, and more soldiers with if he was doing my thinking, as . weapons.” if his thoughts were in my then us kids would be In the days that followed, all of head.” Anderson remembers a taken awa y an d the y re | New Mexico was abuzz with talk mental sensation of falling and . ” of strange lights in the sky, strange tumbling end-over-end. “I felt never see us again. echoes on radar, strange doings in that thing’s fear, felt its depres- the desert. sion, felt its loneliness. I relived On July 7, new reports told of the crash. I know the terror it went through. That one look told me —_ remnants of an unidentified aircraft found by a rancher near the everything that quickly,” he says with a snap of his fingers. town of Roswell, N.M. about 150 miles east of the hillside where Other things began happening quickly about this time, Anderson the Anderson’s stumbled upon the saucer. Although several wit- says. A contingent of armed soldiers suddenly appeared. The crea- _ nesses said it was like nothing they’d ever seen before, military ture, which had calmed down after its initial fright, “went crazy” officers insisted the metallic pieces came from an ordinary weath- at the sight of the soldiers. er balloon. Thinking back on the creature’s plight today brings on the Forty three years later, Anderson smiles wryly when reminded “awfulest, horrible feeling,” Anderson says. “His situation was of the Army’s pronouncement, “A lot of people wondered why, if hopeless. He knew it. He’d just lived through a nightmare that it was just a weather balloon, the military put the pieces under most of us wouldn’t be able to psychologically stand. He’d armed guard and flew them in a B-29 to Wright Patterson Air watched two of his crew, his friends or maybe even his family die. Force Base in Ohio,” he observes. He’s watching another one die. He knows there’s no chance of res- “There was a gash in the side of the disc we saw, like it had been cue, because the military is here and his people aren’t going to be _ crushed in,” he says. “The contour of the craft would fit into that able to get him. “God only knows how far away from home he __ gash perfectly - like another one of these things had hit it. I think was, and he knew he was never going to see - if they have loved _ two of these discs had a mid-air collision. One exploded and fell in ones - his loved ones again. He was totally alone on a hostile plan- —_ pieces near Roswell, and the other crash-landed where we found it. et, and the only people who where showing him kindness were Of the five Anderson men who ventured into the desert that day being run off by the military at weapon-point. “ in 1947, only Gerald is still alive. Age, illness and accidents As a kid, I was aware of what being afraid of the dark was like., claimed the other four in recent years. and the feeling I got from him was that feeling multiplied a million But not only the Andersons were at the scene, Gerald says, and times. It was scary. It was terrifying. he hopes his decision to come forth, albeit belated, will encourage Anderson says he lost sight of the creature as the soldiers others to tell what they know and spur official revelations about the swarmed over the site. The civilians were brusquely shoved from captured craft and creatures. “I want to see the government stand the craft. Anderson remembers shouts and threats. His uncle Ted _up and say, ‘Look, we’re not alone in the universe. threw a punch at one of the GIs. “Things got very tense, very dan- gerous,” Anderson says. “The soldiers ushered us out of there very (Taken from an article in the NEWS-LEADER, a newspaper from unceremoniously. Their attitude, to describe it at best, was uncivi- Springfield, Missouri, dated Sunday, December 9, 1990.) (Taken from an article in the NEWS-LEADER, a newspaper from Springfield, Missouri, dated Sunday, December 9, 1990.) NEXUS - 25 MAY/JUNE 1991 *- YEAR BOOK