by Jesse Marcel
Dad met with a gentleman by the name of Jeff Holter, who was working for the Department of Defense as a civilian scientist charged with determining wave heights and surges produced by the detonation of the atomic bombs. As it turns out, purely by coincidence, I was to become good friends with Jeff, who lived in my current home town of Helena, Montana. On one early visit to Jeff's laboratory, I noticed a picture of the Baker tests, and mentioned that my father had been there. I was quite surprised when Jeff responded, "I know. I met with him there. We even tossed back a few drinks in the Officers' Club."
My parents spent many evenings playing bridge with Major Don Yeager and his wife Helen, along with Colonel William Blanchard. They would play all night long, consuming copious amounts of their favorite beverages and chain-smoking cigarettes. They also enjoyed going to the 0 (Officers') Club and playing bingo on the weekends. All in all, life was normal for the times-that, of course, was destined to change dramatically in the summer of 1947.
Officer's Club at the RAAF circa 1947.
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As noted earlier, I do not claim that this chapter is a comprehensive story of my father's life. That would fill an entire book by itself. My main purpose here is to give you a little background information, and to document my dad's journey into government service. Perhaps this will help answer some questions that have, on occasion, been raised about his qualifications for and participation in the events surrounding the Roswell Incident. In a later chapter I'll dig a little deeper into Roswell's lasting effects on my dad, and on our family.
What I primarily wish to convey here is that there was so much more to my father than his place as a mere footnote in history. Perhaps one day I will sit down and tell his whole story; he was a man whom I think the world needs to know. When I started looking through all of my parents' old photos and documents, I learned many things about my father that I had never known. One thing that stands out is that he was an adept wordsmith, who regularly committed his thoughts and feelings-in both poetry and prose-to his personal diary. Perhaps, if he had not been such an honorable officer, he might even have told this story himself. His dedication to the Army and his country ran deep, however, and he never wrote anything that would have run contrary to his orders to keep silent about the events that were about to transpire. Thus, he has left with me the task of seeing that the truth is told. It is a task I feel both honored and humbled to have undertaken.
The following is a short list of some of my father's awards and decorations.
15 awards for combat credit.
15 decorations and bronze service stars awarded for service.
Air Medal with oak leaf cluster for operational combat flight missions from December 4, 1943, to April 23, 1944. Attached to the 65th Bomb Squadron.
Soldier's Medal for meritorious achievement in military operations against the enemy in the Southwest Pacific Area from January 15, 1944 to November 1, 1944.
His post-war evaluations have come under major scrutiny, especially by the skeptics trying to undermine his reputation. He was thought of very highly by his superior officers both before and after the Roswell event. His marks are generally excellent with an overall rating of high excellence. He was marked down slightly for organizational abilities, but otherwise had excellent scores. One report from one individual had him as unimaginative, but I would think that would give him more credibility in describing the debris: If he was not imaginative, how could he have imagined debris from a weather balloon as having come from a flying saucer? David Rudialc has an excellent rundown of his evaluations on the Internet, at www.roswellproofcom-Major Marcel's Postwar Service Evaluations of May 6, 1948, to August 2, 1948, and General Ramey's evaluation of August 19, 1948.
D Vice Admiral Blandy of Operation Crossroads wrote an endorsement highly recommending Marcel for the permanent award of the Army Commendation Ribbon.
In spite of what the skeptics of my dad say, the Roswell event did not affect his career, as he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the reserves.
Jesse Marcel Se's certificate for the Air Medal and Bronze Star.
Chapter 2
The Debris
The year 1947 began in a burst of optimism. Although the United States had just fought one of the bloodiest conflicts in the history of humankind, we were still relatively innocent in many ways. Life was settling back to normal after the war, and the country was moving forward with a newly robust economy. Our lives were enhanced by modern conveniences that had only been dreamed of a few years earlier. We were in total control of our destiny, and the sky was the limit where our standard of living was concerned. Those were good times in my life, simple times when little boys could play and dream and aspire to greatness, seemingly limited only by their imaginations. Little did I know, however, that things were about to change beyond anything I could possibly have imagined, and that the world I knew would never again be as simple.
I turned 11 that year, and similar to a lot of kids my age, I was interested in aviation. The dashing aces who had torn up the skies during the two World Wars were my heroes, and stick-built models of the airplanes they had flown hung from the ceiling of my bedroom at various attitudes. My favorite models were the WWI biplanes such as the British SPAD, and the German Fokker triplane flown by Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the famous "Red Baron." (When Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier with the Bell X-1 on October 14 of that year, a model of his Bell X 1 joined the other models hanging from my ceiling.) And even though my dad wasn't one of the legendary aces, he did dream of becoming a pilot, and took his place pretty near the top of the list of my heroes. Although he never actually got his license, he did have a good amount of "bootleg" time in the right seat. I remember him telling us of a time when he was landing a B-25 Mitchell like those used on the Doolittle Tokyo raid, when he came in too low with a heavy load and almost collapsed the landing gear. No significant damage was done to the airplane or its cargo, but his pride took a bit of a beating. I remember him saying the aircraft was carrying a heavy safe and he almost landed underneath the runway.
Most days, I could be found riding around my neighborhood on my bicycle. But in those magical times, it wasn't a bicycle at all, but a Fokker, screaming across the skies over France, and I was the dashing Baron, striking fear in the hearts of my enemies and wonder in the eyes of my fellow aces. In my mind, I could hear the thunder of the engine as I swooped down on my prey, proud raptor in wood and fabric, the heat of the exhaust turning the oil spray to mist on the goggles I had purchased at the five-and-ten-cent store. I was, in those innocent times, the true lord of the skies.
In the cool of the evening, when darkness drove all aces to ground, we would chase the fireflies as they flitted across the blackness, or search for the strange insects and lizards that came out once the din of our aerial battles was silenced. So many years have passed since those days and nights. I am what most people would consider an old man now, but when I close my eyes, I am still a little boy, drinking deep from the well of wonder that seems to run dry as we get older. I may tend to forget little things that happened to me yesterday or the day before, but I can still remember the sounds, the smells, and the sky that burned brighter and clearer in daylight than any I've seen since, and that by night held a darkness that must only exist in this inexplicable place, and on planets beyond the reach of grownups and their machines.
But something was happening in our skies that summer that shattered the simplicity of the times and defied explanation. How much was real and how much was the product of the public's overly active imagination is something on which no one can agree, even today. In June, there had been dozens of reports of strange objects flitting through the air, which most observers described as flying saucers or flying discs. For instance, Kenneth Arnold was a civilian pilot who was flying around Mt. Rainier that month, looking for a downed aircraft, when a reflection of sunlight caught his attention. As he looked in the direction of Mt. Baker, he saw nine boomerang- or crescent-shaped objects flying
in formation near the mountaintop, apparently traveling at a tremendous speed. He likened them to saucers skipping over the surface of water, but when he tried to close in on them they were traveling much too fast. That was one week before something crashed to the ground outside of Roswell, New Mexico. Not long after that there was a report of an unknown object being picked up on radarscopes at Alamogordo and White Sands. The next day there were various eyewitness reports of a glowing object traveling in the area of Roswell heading toward the northwest.
About that time I recall seeing an intense blue-white light traveling to the northwest over Roswell one evening as I looked up while going into the house. I did not put much meaning into that sighting, so accustomed was I to the magic of being a boy growing up in the desert, until I learned of other people reporting basically the same thing. I began to wonder if there might be lords of other skies unknown to us, who had come to pay a visit to the men who reigned supreme beneath this sun.
Main Street, Roswell, circa 1947.
The event that was to change my father's life-and muie-happened one stormy summer evening at the Foster Ranch near Corona, New Mexico, about 75 miles north of Roswell. The foreman of that ranch, William "Mac" Brazel, heard a sound like some sort of explosion. The sound was apparently heard on another ranch some 10 to 12 miles away. Mr. Brazel reported that the noise was strong enough to rattle the windows in the ranch house for a short time. The thunderstorms in the area that night were pretty severe, and goodness knows the summertime storms around Roswell were frequently intense, with high wind and copious amounts of rain. The storms usually came on very quickly, and the skies would clear just as suddenly. I recall one afternoon I went to a movie at the Plains Theater with a friend when a cloudburst just west of Roswell started up. By the time we got out of the movie, people were using boats to go down Main Street.
There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Brazel was well aware of the sounds generated by thunderstorms, particularly because the ranch house had been hit by lightning in the past. But this sound was different from anything produced by a thunderstorm or a lightning strike. This sounded more like what I imagined to be a large bomb exploding.
Mac Brazel said that the following morning, he saddled his horse and rode out to look for what could have possibly caused the loud explosion, and to check the area for any damage. To his surprise, he came across an area that was littered with, among other things, a huge amount of foil-like debris. Something had apparently impacted the ground at a high rate of speed and fanned its components into a wedgeshaped field of wreckage. A large herd of sheep was stranded on one side of the debris field; the sheep refused to cross it, even though their water supply was on the other side. Mr. Brazel ended up having to lead them around the area so they could get to the water. Some reports say he gathered up some of the debris and brought it to a neighboring ranch, where a woman named Loretta Proctor lived. She reportedly suggested to him that there might be some kind of a reward for turning the material in, so a short time later-I am not sure exactly when, as there are varying stories-he went into the nearby town of Corona.
It was there that he heard stories of strange flying machines invading the skies. Although Mr. Brazel had previously seen debris from weather balloon crashes on the Foster Ranch property, this material looked different. Very different. And after listening to the tales of the flying saucers, he became convinced that maybe the stuff he had discovered was part of one of these strange machines.
Brazel thought the local sheriff's office would be the appropriate place to reveal what he'd discovered. He figured he'd let Sheriff Wilcox examine it and decide what to do. But the sheriff could not make any definitive judgment on what it was, so he contacted the command at the Roswell Army Air Field. Colonel William Blanchard, the base commander, had my dad go over to the sheriff's office to see what Brazel had brought in. My father was the base intelligence officer, and, as such, part of his job was to be on an investigative team for aircraft accidents, or any problem that arose with security. The base was part of the SAC (Strategic Air Command), and was responsible for the nuclear weapons housed there.
My father looked the debris over and determined that it was indeed bizarre-certainly out of the ordinary-and merited further examination. When Colonel Blanchard got my dad's report on the unusual nature of the material, he had Dad and Captain Sheridan "Cav" Cavitt, a counterintelligence agent (in the CIC), accompany Mr. Brazel back to the ranch so they could see for themselves what was there. They went in separate vehicles, my dad going in the family car, a 1942 blue Buick Special convertible, and Cavitt going in a military carryall. The ranch was about 75 miles away, on roads that had seldom seen cars. They arrived early in the evening, and decided to spend the night at the ranch and inspect the debris field the next day. The following morning, the three of them went to the see what was out there.
Once at the debris field, instead of being able to get answers for Colonel Blanchard, they only unearthed more questions. The debris field was very large, and, as I mentioned earlier, wedge-shaped, or perhaps I should say fan-shaped. There was a scar at the apex of the fan, which spread out for several hundred yards to a considerable width at the end of the field.
My dad was not entirely satisfied with the debris that had already been collected, so he directed Captain Cavitt to go on to the base while he went back out and collected more of the material. (In retrospect, I wonder if he had Capt. Cavitt go on ahead so he could then bring the debris to our house without calling attention to his side trip.) He placed the debris in a box in the back seat of our 1942 Buick, and more in the trunk. Even with all of the material he gathered, he said that this was only a small portion of what was found.
My father knew that what he had found was something absolutely incredible, and even though speaking of it might not have been condoned by his base commander, he knew that it was important to share what he had seen with my mother and me. And that's how the debris ended up in the kitchen of our little house at 1300 West Seventh Street.
I remember that kitchen so well, with its white cupboards and white-and-gold linoleum. If you came into the kitchen through the back door, as we often did, the sunk was to the left, the stove and refrigerator to the right. A swinging door led into the dining room. My memory of that night is as clear as my memory of the details of our house. As it was summertime, the back door was open to let in fresh air. The temperature outside was in the upper 60s, and the air was slightly humid because of yet another recent thunderstorm.
As the base intelligence officer, my father kept rather odd hours, and it was not unusual for him to be gone for days. He had left for work the previous morning and hadn't been home for dinner the previous night or this one. I don't remember what time it was when my father awakened me, but I had been sleeping soundly for some time, weary after a day of bicycling with my friends. More than likely it was a little after midnight. My dad came into my room to tell me to come out and see what he'd found. He said that he had been out to a ranch and had picked up debris from something that had crashed there. As I recall, he was still in uniform because he was going back to the base that night. (In fact, I seldom if ever saw him in civilian clothes unless we were on vacation.) Of course, it wasn't normal for my father to wake me up late at night just to show me something, so I immediately put my robe on and followed him into the kitchen area.
I only later found out that the details about how he and Captain Sheridan Cavitt had been sent out to the Foster Ranch to examine the wreckage of an unknown craft of some sort. All I knew this night was that he was pretty excited about something, that he thought it was an extraordinary event, and he wanted my mother and me to be part of it. My mother was already up as I walked down the dimly lit hallway that led to the living room and then to the kitchen. Upon reaching the kitchen, the first thing I noticed was a cardboard box that had been mostly emptied, with the contents positioned carefully on the floor. The box was a standard 2-by-2 in size, so it could hold only a moderate amount of debris, bu
t there was still enough material to cover a significant portion of our kitchen floor.
My dad spoke very excitedly to us about the material, telling us that these were parts from a "flying saucer," or words to that effect. At that time, I was not entirely sure what was meant by a "flying saucer," but I knew from his demeanor that this was something very special.
I looked wide-eyed at the debris that was spread out on the floor, along with what little had been left in the box, and quickly determined that there were three different kinds of material present: foil, broken pieces of plastic, and what appeared to be metal beams, or I-beams.
The brownish-black plastic looked similar to pieces of Bakelite (a plastic used in countertops in the 1940s), or perhaps a broken phonograph record. Actually, the material was lighter than Bakelite, and whereas Bakelite is a fibrous material, this had more of a homogeneous structure to it. The pieces I saw were about 1/16 of an inch thick, with fractured edges, yet I don't recall seeing any fractures in the material itself. The surface was smooth, with no wrinkles, grooves, or indentations. The largest piece was about 6 or 8 inches square, with most pieces being 3 or 4 inches. There was not nearly as much of this as there was of the foil. The I-beams, at first glance, appeared to be made from the same material as the foil, but they were more substantial.
Even though the material was pretty interesting, I have to admit that I still didn't really understand what all the excitement was about. It surely did not seem to be anything worth getting up in the middle of the night to see. But my dad was really excited about it, and he wasn't the type to get that excited about just anything. So I took a closer look at the debris.
