Earth

by Timothy Good

  “I am not absolutely sure of the date when we saw this film but I do remember that it was around the time of the Cuban missile crisis, and the place was the huge airbase at Karlsruhe [Germany],” he replied. “The gigantic Karlsruhe base had all the usual luxuries, including a full-scale plush cinema which not only showed the latest Hollywood releases but doubled up as a lecture theater for the showing of training films. The Americans were exceptionally keen on these films, and it was not unusual for us to see anything up to half a dozen or so during our visit. So when we settled down in the cinema, we were not expecting to see anything extraordinary. As it’s almost fifty years ago, I will try to recall as best I can what we were actually shown.

  “Strangely enough, we were not briefed in advance and the film itself was unusual in that it was not preceded by the ‘over-the-top’ rhetoric that usually introduced these training films. There was only a sparse commentary, but what was surprising was that the first part of the film was in color; not the garish Technicolor version, but a kind of subdued soft-focus look.

  “The opening scenes were of the New Mexico desert and what was obviously the crash site. It was plainly obvious that the movie was an amateur affair probably shot by a local, and several people appeared in it holding up what looked like pieces of metal and grinning at the camera. The wreckage was apparently spread over a vast area and was reduced to just small pieces, nothing resembling an aircraft, and whatever had impacted there must have done so at colossal speed and force.

  “It was obvious that this footage had been shot before the area had been secured. This part of the film had no commentary at all. Then there were scenes of the wreckage being taken away by the military and mention of a secure airbase somewhere which was only identified by a number. Then surprisingly the film reverted to black and white and became much slicker and professional.

  “The scenes at the airbase showed the unloading of the recovered material and only then did the commentary mention strange ‘creatures’ found with the wreckage and the startling admission that one of them was still ‘alive,’ whatever that meant. There were shots of military ambulances and something being off-loaded onto wheeled stretchers.

  “Then the scene switched to what looked like a hospital operating theatre. I must explain that this section of the film was scratched and grainy as if it had been shown many times, as it probably had. The camera shots were angled so that you didn’t really get a clear shot of the ‘alien’ body, but there was just one brief moment when it came into focus. The tiny creature was obviously mangled badly but I can only describe it as being like those aliens shown in sci-fi movies, with an oversized head and small body and limbs.

  “Once again, the commentary was sparse and there was no attempt to explain or tell what happened to the alien. I would estimate that the entire film did not last more than fifteen minutes or so, but then at the very end it reverted to type and there was some blurb about being constantly vigilant and keep watching the skies, etc.

  “Naturally the British lads reviewed all of these films with a healthy skepticism and their usual brand of deprecating humor. I don’t remember anybody at the time being particularly impressed, as we all considered the Americans to be guilty of over-nervousness bordering on paranoia about their attitude to the Soviet threat. This was, after all, the height of the Cold War [with] the hysteria that was prevalent at that period in our history….”14

  According to a military officer stationed at the U.S. Army Reserve base at Fort Allen, Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico, in 1990 (following a period involving an alarming increase of alien activity on the island, including the capture of U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat jets), a video film was shown to the men as part of an indoctrination. “They showed us an old black-and-white film about a UFO crash that supposedly happened in New Mexico many years ago,” the officer related to investigator Jorge Martín. “We all saw the craft, which was semi-buried in the ground at a 45-degree angle, and there were several bodies of the crew. According to what we were shown, these bodies were about five feet tall, thin, very pale, and had large bald heads. They had big round eyes and a small nose, but I don’t recall any mouths or ears.

  “They also showed us another video of UFOs filmed by them around the island. They wanted us to know that UFOs are real, but they wouldn’t elaborate when asked for details. It seemed to me that they wanted us to know this was real and that the beings were not perfect: they are fallible, their crafts crash, and they also die—they are not invulnerable. Apparently, they wanted to condition us to the idea that they exist, and to accept the possibility of someday having to liaise with them.”15

  Survivors

  At the time of writing, the most recent report relating to the New Mexico incidents was sent to me by the American researcher Ted Oliphant, a former police officer. He had acquired the information from a confidential source whose father had developed the film of the Roswell incident.

  “The whole thing was documented,” Ted revealed. “He was in the service, then went to work for ‘Uncle Sugar’ as a civilian. He said there was one surviving creature. Everything went to Wright-Pat [Wright-Patterson AFB]. He also said many of those involved in the retrieval later died of cancer.16 I just learned this today; I’d known him for years but this is the first time it ever came up in conversation. Nathan Twining Jr., the son of General Twining [Commanding General of Air Materiel Command at the time], says that years later, his dad told him that he’d seen the survivor himself, and that they communicated telepathically.”17

  There are remarkable parallels in this report with another, which I first learned of in 1995 from Sir Mark Thomson, a friend who had served as a jet pilot with the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm (then holding Top Secret Atomic clearance). He related to me that during a flight on an airliner in the United States in 1995 he had met a lady, Linda Pitchersky, who asserted that her father, Robert R. Largent, a former U.S. Army Air Corps flying instructor, had spoken with a fellow officer who claimed to have cared for “the only living, remaining being” who had survived the Roswell incident. Sir Mark shortly thereafter interviewed Largent by telephone and provided me with the following report:

  “This elderly man had been a B-29 pilot [during] the war. As his Squadron had a nuclear capability, he had a very high security clearance. Since his retirement [as a major in the Reserves], his civilian job had involved a high amount of commercial flying. On one of these trips in the 1960s, [Robert] happened to sit next to a man who was a colonel in the Air Force, and their conversation centered on Air Force and flying matters.

  “After Robert had explained his previous very high security clearance, he asked the colonel what he was presently doing. He told Robert that he had been looking after an alien for the past two and a half years at a base (presumably U.S. Air Force) near Dayton, Ohio. He went on to say that they had had the most terrible time feeding the alien. They had tried everything, but nothing satisfied his nutrition and dietary requirements, and as a result of this he had recently died. The colonel went on to say that he so cared for the alien that when he died, he nearly cried. He did not give Robert his name and continually stressed that if he ever disclosed this to anyone, he would be in the gravest difficulty.

  “At this point in our conversation, I asked Robert various questions. Why did Robert think a complete stranger, a U.S. Air Force colonel, chose to reveal this great secret to him? He replied that firstly they shared a great bond, both being pilots (I can certainly confirm this unique, strong bond between military pilots all over the world!). It was clear to Robert that the alien had recently died and the colonel really wanted to talk to somebody about his grief and feelings of loss, and that Robert’s high security clearance made him comfortable in discussing it.

  “This is the total of Robert’s knowledge from this chance meeting with the colonel,” Mark concluded. “Of course, I am not to know whether the colonel told Robert other things that Robert is declining to tell me, but I certainly
got no indication of this. Robert struck me as an extremely sincere and intelligent older man….”18 Both men felt that their lives were threatened if they revealed what they knew.

  In 2005, Robert’s daughter Linda contacted me, reminding me that, coincidentally, we had met briefly at a UFO presentation I gave in North Carolina in 1993. I asked her what she had learned from her father (now deceased):

  “My memory of what Dad had to say was that he had met the gentleman who cared for the only remaining living being on the spaceship that crashed [near] Roswell. Dad said that the fellow cried as he told him, because he missed the little one so much. He told Dad that it was like living with Jesus Christ. And he recounted that they didn’t speak verbally, but telepathically, mind to mind. Dad remembered that he told him that the little man was so gentle and kind.

  “Dad also remembered that he said the alien had only lived for eighteen months, due to the atmospheric conditions and unacceptable food. Dad and this other Air Force officer (perhaps a lieutenant) met on an Air Force transport sometime during his stay in the service. Dad would have been in the Air Force Reserves.”19

  “Assuming the U.S. personnel were able to communicate with this alien,” Mark pointed out to me, “why couldn’t he tell them about their dietary needs? In view of their superior intelligence and as they had already been here for some time, they must have known what foodstuffs were available on Earth. My clear understanding from Robert was that it was a feeding problem as opposed to a disease or illness problem.” A good question. I have learned a great deal, for instance, from “Thomas,” one of the hand-picked team that took care of two survivors from the Roswell incident for a considerable period of time, as part of an Anglo-American-Alien “arrangement” (Chapter 10). The injured aliens they cared for and communicated with extensively (via a type of telepathy, as in the two previous cases) seemed mostly capable of consuming their own liquid-based nutriments.

  Although some of Linda’s information is at variance with that supplied to Sir Mark by her father, it does not, in my view, negate the essentials of the story. When dealing with sensitive information, it is as common for informants to deliberately alter some of the facts as it is for recipients sometimes to get their facts wrong.

  Anglo/American Incidents

  The village of Tarland lies some twenty-five miles west of Aberdeen, Scotland. In the summer of 1957, the Aberdeen Division of the Territorial Army (TA) had chosen this area, which included much densely wooded terrain, for an exercise. The following report was supplied to me by researcher Ian Taylor.

  At around 04:00, two young recruits from the main force heard what they thought were the advancing “enemy” coming toward their position through the trees. Armed and ready in their trench for a surprise attack, they suddenly heard strange, guttural-like voices and the cracking of twigs as though people were breaking them underfoot. What happened next threw the men into a state of abject panic:

  “They saw two human-like figures coming toward them that seemed to be around seven to eight feet in height, wearing what they described to be very tight-fitting, one-piece silvery-colored garments. The guttural-like sounds they first heard were in fact some form of dialogue between these entities.

  “The soldiers jumped up from their positions and took off in the opposite direction toward the roadway. They continued to run, still in a state of panic. Then, just above the tree-line close to the Tarland roadway, a large and glowing disc-like object of intense brightness appeared overhead, showering down what looked like sparks. The object appeared to follow them as they ran, and then rapidly overtook them and shot skyward.

  “One of the men collapsed from exhaustion and lay at the side of the road while his colleague continued to run, eventually reaching a Post Office line engineer in a roadside trailer. The soldier apparently hammered on the door for help. Eventually the two men returned to fetch the other soldier and brought him to the trailer to recover….

  “The press carried an article a couple of days later, but in no great detail. Following the article, the two young TA recruits had been interviewed by personnel who had traveled up from Whitehall in London. I can recall years later someone who claimed he knew one of the soldiers, who said they had been given instructions to maintain a vow of silence over the event….”20

  Harold Varnam, the British Army veteran cited earlier in connection with the indoctrination film shown at the Karlsruhe air base, Germany, also sent me his report of an encounter with a “definite foreign object,” an incident which occurred in June of either 1971 or ’72 while he was participating in an exercise at the Stanford Battle Area—better known as the Stanford Training Area (STANTA)—located in the county of Norfolk.

  “Our small unit of the Army Emergency Reserve (AER) was under the auspices of NATO, and we usually did our annual fifteen-day main exercise on the Lüneberg Heide [a large area of heath and woodland in northern Germany] attached to the 4th Armoured Division,” his narrative begins. “Sometimes we went further afield to Canada, Cyprus, or Kenya, etc. But for some reason, on this particular year we joined the scheme in Norfolk.

  “It was an extended NATO exercise covering most of the European Theater and had been going for some time when we joined it. I believe the exercise was coded ‘Greensward,’ which was conducted in two phases—Greensward I and Greensward II. Our phase, Greensward I, was more of a search and evasion exercise and was infantry-based, although there was artillery and aircraft support. At the first briefing there were groans of dismay when we were told that it would be a live-firing exercise and then sighs of relief when we were told that although the scheme was being run by the U.S. Fifth Army, the live-firing would be the responsibility of 2nd Coldstreams, whose motto was Nulli Secundus [‘Second to None’]. We knew that the disciplined Guards would ensure that accidents, always inevitable, would be kept to a minimum.

  “Our unit’s four-man night patrols were tasked with our usual role of observation and reconnaissance, but we were given free rein to harass the ‘enemy’ whenever targets of opportunity arose. The weather was splendid, and to tell the truth it never really got properly dark…. On the night of the incident, which we think was a Thursday/Friday, our own patrol had split into two pairs as we approached our designated target. My partner, a man who I will refer to as ‘Lange Jan’ [named after a church steeple on the island of Walcheren, one of the highest points in Holland], was very popular with the Dutch Kriegsmarine Kommando who we trained with, and they had bestowed that nickname on him.

  “As we approached our target area, a very bright light appeared on the horizon.

  “It looked at first like huge car headlights, but this was very unusual as, apart from the odd tracers and flares, the battlefield was almost always in darkness. Then suddenly, and I do mean instantaneously, the light was immediately to our front, probably some three miles away. The only way I can describe this light is to call it ‘blue-white,’ rather like that given off by the new LED bulbs—only very much brighter. Then we realized a peculiar thing: the light did not radiate, it simply seemed to be self-contained [and] appeared to either be hovering over, or in, a wooded area in our target zone. We decided to take a closer look.

  “Lange Jan, originally out of 1 PARA [1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment], was the best field soldier I ever knew, and he had the ability to almost merge with any terrain, but nevertheless after a stealthy thousand yards or so we were bumped by an American patrol who told us that this area was now out of bounds. Undeterred, we tried again, but when we were stopped a second time by a very jumpy officer, extremely nervous, and told in no uncertain terms that we had to leave, we decided to let it go.

  “As it was already becoming daylight in the east, we started to head back to our lines when instantly the light went out, just as if someone had thrown a switch. But we could clearly see fires burning in the wooded area and what looked like considerable damage to the trees and undergrowth, although there was no s
ign of debris.

  “At the next morning’s ‘O’ Group debriefing session, we learned that only two of our patrols had seen the strange light, but when we brought it up an intel [intelligence] officer said that a Phantom [jet] had crashed and the area was now off-limits for the rest of the exercise. The Phantoms, operating out of Lakenheath, had indeed been taking part in the scheme, doing low-level mock strafing and bombing runs (and terrifying they were too). But I had previously served in the Royal Air Force in Air/Surface Movements (what would now be called a ‘dispatcher’) and had seen first-hand some plane crashes, and the incident in the woods did not resemble in any way a ‘normal’ air crash. But that was the end of the matter: it never came up again.

  “Generous as ever, the Americans allowed us the use of the facilities at [RAF] Alconbury: the PX stores (hypermarkets where one could purchase an almost unbelievable range of goods at very competitive prices) and the Rod and Gun Club lounge, when we were on stand-down. In the club the following day, we brought up the subject of the downed plane, but no one seemed to know anything about it, or if they did, they were playing tight-lipped.

  “After de-briefing and release on the Saturday, we decided once more to take a look for ourselves at the site. At the time, Lange Jan had a long-wheel-base Land Rover, [and] so six of us got aboard and we headed for the crash site. But this time it was heavily cordoned off and we could not get really close, but we did have field glasses and we could clearly see the scorched area of the wood, which looked as though a road had been carved through it, maybe some seventy or eighty yards wide. Since we were attracting unwarranted attention, we decided to scoot. Since that day, I had never really thought about it. Only some local interest in a UFO incident brought back the memories of that night in Norfolk….”21