Original story:
http://nctimes.com/articles/2007/09/30/lifeandtimes/20_37_059_29_07.prt
<http://nctimes.com/articles/2007/09/30/lifeandtimes/20_37_059_29_07.prt\
>



The truth is out there: Roswell incident recalled by local vet who was
there 60 years ago



By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer

Something happened in Roswell, New Mexico, 60 years ago this summer.



In June or early July 1947, a farmer found strange debris while working
on a

ranch about 70 miles north of Roswell. He put some of it in a box and
drove

to the local sheriff. Neither man knew what to make of it, so the
sheriff

called Roswell Army Air Field, which sent two men to investigate.

On July 9, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record, a newspaper, printed a story
with

the alarming headline: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell

Region."



Other than those facts, there appear to be few things people agree on

regarding what has become known as "the Roswell incident."



Six decades later, competing UFO enthusiasts promote their own theories,

skeptics dismiss the spaceship claims as outrageous, and the military,
which

originally claimed all the fuss was over a weather balloon, now sticks
to

its story that it was an experimental spy craft.



Escondido resident Milton Sprouse, 85, said he knows what happened in

Roswell ---- not because he favors one theory over another, but because
he

was there.



As for the outrageous stories of mysterious metal, alien corpses and a

military coverup?



It's all true, he said.



From atom bombs to flying saucers



Before arriving at Roswell Army Air Field in 1945 as a corporal and
engine

mechanic, Sprouse already had participated in an undisputable historic

event.



As a member of the 393rd Bomb Squadron assigned to the 509th Composite

Group, Sprouse worked on the ground crew of Big Stink, one of the B-29

bombers stationed on the Pacific island of Tinian, where the two atomic
bomb

missions on Japan were launched to end World War II.



After the war, the 509th Composite Group was reassigned to Roswell,
where

they were renamed the 509th Bomb Wing. Sprouse continued to lead the
ground

crew of Big Stink, which had been renamed Dave's Dream after the pilot.



"There was nothing there but tumbleweeds blowing for miles," he said
about

arriving at Roswell in November 1945.



Sprouse first learned that something odd was going on at Roswell after

returning from a three-day trip to Florida aboard Dave's Dream.



"I was there the day they announced a UFO had crashed," he said. "The
next

day, it was published in the Roswell Daily Record, and that night, all
the

generals said the story was untrue."



Farmer William "Mac" Brazel had found debris on the J.B. Foster Ranch,
where

he was a foreman, sometime in June or early July. Brazel took some of
the

material, which reportedly included sticks, rubber strips, metallic foil
and

sturdy paper, to Sheriff George Wilcox, who called the air base.



Intelligence Officer Jesse Marcel was sent to the sheriff's station.
Marcel

reported what he saw to Air Force commanding officer Col. William
Blanchard,

who told him to go with Brazel to the ranch and examine the crash site.



After spending the night at the ranch, Marcel and another officer loaded

their vehicles with debris, some of which reportedly was marked with

mysterious symbols, and drove back to the base. Blanchard then ordered a

press release stating that the base had captured a flying saucer.



The original story ran in the local paper July 8. That same day, the
debris

was loaded onto a B-29 and sent with Marcel to an Air Force base in
Texas.

Marcel was photographed with what was said to be the debris, and the

military issued a statement saying that it was in fact a weather
balloon.



Search for the truth



Meanwhile, Sprouse said, all copies of the Roswell newspaper were
collected

by officers, and hundreds of men from the 509th were taken to the crash
site

and told to walk shoulder-to-shoulder through the field, looking for
debris

pieces.



Sprouse himself did not go because he was told he was needed for Dave's

Dream, but five men from his ground crew went to the ranch.



"They said it was out of this world," Sprouse said about what the crew

reported finding. Among the objects it reported seeing was a metallic
foil

that, when crumpled, unfolded without a crease.



But what was the debris? Was it really something from another world, or
just

the product of overactive imaginations fueled by the monotony of a
desolate

1950s desert town?



One thing that is agreed upon now: It was not from a weather balloon.



In 1995, after years of questions about the incident, the U.S. Air Force

admitted the weather-balloon story was fabricated to cover up a
top-secret

project called Project Mogul designed to detect atomic activity over the

Soviet Union with high-altitude balloons.



Some of the launches in the project contained more than two dozen
neoprene

balloons strung across more than 600 feet.



Charles Moore, a Project Mogul scientist interviewed in the Air Force

report, has spoken in public about the project and described striking

similarities to what was found at the ranch outside of Roswell and the

Project Mogul material, which used sticks, metallic paper and strangely

marked tape.



The strange markings that had seemed like cosmic hieroglyphics may have
had

a much more mundane explanation: Moore said the project used tape made
at a

toy factory.



The balloons were launched in June and July 1947 from Alamogordo Army
Air

Field in New Mexico. One flight was launched June 4 and tracked to
Arabela,

N.M., about 17 miles from the Foster ranch, before its batteries ran
down

and contact was lost.



More questions



But if the debris did come from a Project Mogul craft, how could a
string of

balloons create the types of gouges on the ground some witnesses have

reported?



Then again, maybe there were no gouges; skeptics of the UFO theory have

noted that some witnesses changed their stories about what they saw on
the

crash site.



The Project Mogul explanation also does not address why some people
reported

seeing alien bodies at the site. Those were explained in another report
in

1997 that concluded the bodies actually were anthropomorphic dummies
used to

test high-altitude parachutes.



UFO believers found the explanation a little too convenient. There also
was

a timing problem, as the parachute tests were not conducted until the
1950s.

The timing discrepancy has been explained as the result of people who
over

the years confused the two incidents and compressed memories of them
into

one event.



Sprouse, however, said he recalls people speaking about "alien bodies"

immediately after the debris discovery.



"They took the bodies to a hangar, and there were two guards at each
door

with machine guns," he said.



Sprouse said one witness, a barracksmate, was an emergency-room medic
who

reported seeing what he called "humanoid" bodies in the hospital.



"They went to the ER room and two doctors and two nurses were called in,
and

they dissected two of those humanoid bodies," he said. "Then the doctors
and

nurses were transferred.



"My friend said he saw the bodies, and I believed him," Sprouse said.
"He

said, 'We don't think the humanoid ate food.' I don't know why he said
that.

The digestive system wasn't designed for food or something."



Like the other doctors and nurses, Sprouse said, his friend suddenly was

transferred, and he never heard from him again. Others on the base,
however,

kept the story alive.



"I heard it so many times, it had to be true," he said.



Sprouse said he knew Marcel, but he never spoke to him after the
incident.



"From that day on, I could never get close to him," he said.



The story lives on



After the story about the UFO crash was retracted, the rest of the world

largely forgot about Roswell and accepted that what had been discovered
was

just a misidentified weather balloon.



The men stationed at the base, however, did not easily forget.



"They were still talking about it when I left, and I left in '56,"
Sprouse

said.



In 1978, Marcel was interviewed by a researcher and appeared in a

documentary, "UFOs Are Real," the following year. The National Enquirer

interviewed Marcel in 1980 for an article in which he said the woodlike

debris could not be burned and the thin metal could not be bent. "The

Roswell Incident" was released in 1980 as the first of a string of books
on

the subject.



As interest grew in the Roswell UFO incident, so did the number of

detractors. Some have questioned Marcel's credibility, saying he got
caught

up in UFO hysteria and was known to exaggerate his own military past.



Jesse Marcel, Jr. published his own book this year, "The Roswell
Legacy,"

defending his father, who died in 1986.



Sprouse has not kept up with all the books and documentaries on Roswell
and

did not go to Roswell in July for the 60th anniversary of the discovery.



He does, however, attend annual reunions with the 509th, which attracts
25

to 30 veterans.



"The Roswell incident comes up every year, but there's nothing really
new,"

he said.



Sprouse also speaks about his experience at Tinian to about five high

schools a year, and he often is invited to speak to other groups. He
usually

ends his talk with his memories of Roswell, often to the surprise of his

audience.



At a talk in Tucson, Ariz., earlier this year, Sprouse said a man came
up to

him afterwards and said, "I don't believe a damn thing you said."



"I told him, 'You can believe what you want, but I know it's true,'"
Sprouse

said.


Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@...


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