1) My name is Glenn Dennis
(2) My address is: XXXXXXXXXX
(3) I am ( ) employed as: __________________________________ ( ) retured,
(4)
In July 1947, I was a mortician, working for the Ballard Funeral Home
in Roswell, which had a contract to provide mortuary services for the
Roswell Army Air Field. One afternoon, around 1:15 or 1:30, I received
a call from the base mortuary officer who asked what was the smallest
size hermetically sealed casket that we had in stock. He said, "We
need to know this in case something comes up in the future." He asked
how long it would take to get one, and I assured him I could get one
for him the following day. He said he would call back if they needed
one.
(5) About 45 minutes to an hour later, he called back
and asked me to describe the preparation for bodies that had been lying
out on the desert for a period of time. Before I could answer, he said
he specifically wanted to know what effect the preparation procedures
would have on the body's chemical compounds, blood and tissues. I
explained that our chemicals were mainly strong solutions of
formaldehyde and water, and that the procedure would probably alter the
body's chemical composition. I offered to come out to the base to
assist with any problem he might have, but he reiterated that the
information was for future use. I suggested that if he had such a
situation that I would try to freeze the body in dry ice for storage
and transportation.
(6) Approximately a hour or an hour and
15 minutes later, I got a call to transport a serviceman who had a
laceration on his head and perhaps a fractured nose. I gave him first
aid and drove him out to the base. I got there around 5:00 PM.
(7)
Although I was a civilian, I usually had free access on the base
because they knew me. I drove the ambulance around to the back of the
base infirmary and parked it next to another ambulance. The door was
open and inside I saw some wreckage. There were several pieces which
looked like the bottom of a canoe, about three feet in length. It
resembled stainless steel with a purple hue, as if it had been exposed
to high temperature. There was some stange-looking writing on the
material resembling Egyption hieroglyphics. Also there were two MPs
present.
(
I checked the airman in and went to the staff
lounge to have a Coke. I intended to look for a nurse, a 2nd
Lieutenant, who had been commissioned about three months earlier right
out of college. She was 23 years of age at the time (I was 22). I saw
her coming out of one of the examining rooms with a cloth over her
mouth. She said, "My gosh, get out of here or you're going to be in a
lot of trouble." She went into another door where a Captain stood. He
asked me who I was and what I was doing here. I told him, and he
instructed me to stay there. I said, "It looks like you've got a
crash; would you like me to get ready?" He told me to stay right
there. Then two MPs came up and began to escort me out of the
infirmary. They said they had orders to follow me out to the funeral
home.
(9) We got about 10 or 15 feet when I heard a voice
say, "We're not through with that SOB. Bring him back." There was
another Captain, a redhead with the meanest-looking eyes I had ever
seen, who said, "You did not see anything, there was no crash here, and
if you say anything you could get into a lot of trouble." I said, "Hey
look mister, I'm a civilian and you can't do a damn thing to me." He
said, "Yes we can; somebody will be picking your bones out of the
sand." There was a black Sergeant with a pad in his hand who said, "He
would make good dog food for our dogs." The Captain said, "Get the SOB
out." The MPs followed me back to the funeral home.
(10)
The next day, I tried to call the nurse to see what was going on.
About 11:00 AM, she called the funeral home and said, "I need to talk
to you." We agreed to meet at the officers club. She was very upset.
She said, "Before I talk to you, you have to give me a sacred oath that
you will never mention my name, because I could get into a lot of
trouble." I agreed.
(11) She said she had gone to get
supplies in a room where two doctors were performing a prelimary
autopsy. The doctors said they needed her to take notes during the
procedure. She said she had never smelled anything so horrible in her
life, and the sight was the most gruesome she had ever seen. She said,
"This was something no one has ever seen." As she spoke, I was
concerned that she might go into shock.
(12) She drew me a
diagram of the bodies, including an arm with a hand that had only four
fingers; the doctors noted that on the end of the fingers were little
pads resembling suction cups. She said the head was disproportionately
large for the body; the eyes were deeply set; the skulls were flexible;
the nose was concave with only two orifices; the mouth was a fine slit,
and the doctors said there was heavy cartilage instead of teeth. The
ears were only small orifices with flaps. They had no hair, and the
skin was black--perhaps due to exposure in the sun. She gave me the
drawings.
(13) There were three bodies; two were very
mangled and dismembered, as if destroyed by predators; one was fairly
intact. They were three-and-a-half to four feet tall. She told me the
doctors said: "This isn't anything we've ever see before; there's
nothing in the medical textbooks like this." She said she and the
doctors became ill. They had to turn off the air conditioning and were
afraid the smell would go through the hospital. They had to move the
operation to an airplane hangar.
(14) I drove her back to
the officers' barracks. The next day I called the hospital to see how
she was, and they said she wasn't available. I tried to get her for
several days, and finally got one of the nurses who said the Lieutenant
had been transferred out with some other personnel. About 10 days to
two weeks later, I got a letter from her with an APO number. She
indicated we could discuss the incident by letter in the future. I
wrote back to her and about two weeks later the letter came back marked
"Return to Sender--DECEASED." Later, one of the nurses at the base said
the ruor was that she and five other nurses had been on a training
mission and had been killed in a plane crash.
(15) Sheriff
George Wilcox and my father were very close friends. The Sheriff went
to my folks' house the morning after the events at the base and said to
my father, "I don't know what kind of trouble Glenn's in, but you tell
your son that he doesn't know anything and hasn't seen anything at the
base." He added, "They want you and your wife's name, and they want
your and your children's addresses." My father immediately drove to
the funeral home and asked me what kind of trouble I was in. He
related the conversation with Sheriff Wilcox, and so I told him about
the events of the previous day. He is the only person to whom I have
told this story until recently.
(16) I had filed away the
sketches the nurse gave me that day. Recently, at the request of a
researcher, I tried to locate my personal files at the funeral home,
but they had all been destroyed.
(17) I have not been paid or given anything of value to make this statement, which is the truth to the best of my recollection.
Signed: Glenn Dennis
Date: 8-7-91
Drawing replicating what 'nurse' drew for Glenn Dennis
[Sources: Karl Pflock, Roswell:
Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, 2001]