The Roswell Legacy: The Untold Story of the First Military Officer at the 1947 Crash Site
192
The Roswell Legacy: The Untold Story of the First Military Officer at the 1947 Crash Site
192Paperback(First Edition)
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Overview
The Roswell Legacy is the story of Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer for the 509th Bomber Group (famous for dropping the atomic bomb on Japan), and the first military officer to reach the scene of one of the most famous and enduring UFO events in the recorded history of mankind. This book docments the recovery of debris from the crash of an extraterrestrial craft and how the Marcel family became forever linked to the event. It details what the debris looked like, how it greatly differed from that of the "weather balloon" that was supposedly recovered, and the physical characteristics that prove it could have only come from a technology that was not available in the 1940s (or, perhaps, even now).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781601630261 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 09/15/2008 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Sales rank: | 718,727 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Linda Marcel is a retired nurse, the mother of two of Jesse's children and the stepmother of one, the grandmother of 10 children, and a breast-cancer survivor.
Stanton T. Friedman is a nuclear physicist who worked on a wide variety of advanced, classified nuclear systems for major industrial companies. He began the civilian investigation of the Roswell Incident; wrote Flying Saucers and Science and TOP SECRET/MAJIC; and coauthored Crash at Corona, Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience, and Science Was Wrong. He has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs. Friedman resides in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Path to Roswell
To know the truth about the incident in Roswell, New Mexico, in the summer of 1947, and the decades of speculation that followed, it helps to know the truth about the participants in this grand play. Much has been written about the individuals involved — some of it quite accurate, and some not so accurate. It is my hope that, after reading my account of the events as I remember them, some of those inaccuracies might be corrected.
My focus in this book is to present you with a clearer picture of the man who was — and remains — at the center of the Roswell controversy: my father, Jesse Marcel, Sr. Although I must acknowledge my own bias, I realize that my duty to my father is to present him as the man he was, as accurately as possible, lest I fall into the same trap as those who have painted an unflattering portrait of him that reflects their own biases and agendas. I feel I am the only living person truly qualified to wield the brush.
Even so, this will not be the complete story of my father's life. But it will give you some background and perspective missing in most accounts.
From Royalty to Rural Americana
In 1789, my great-grandfather and his brother, born of the royal Dauphine family, left their home in France to escape the carnage of the French Revolution. My great-grandfather moved to Louisiana, and took the name Marcell (which my father ended up shortening to its current spelling), while my great-granddad's brother apparently settled in French Canada. To my knowledge, the two brothers never saw each other again.
My father was born on May 27, 1907, in a place called Bayou Blue, in the Terrebonne Parish town of Houma, Louisiana. He was the youngest of seven siblings born to Theodule and Adelaide Marcel. Though they were in many respects an average farm family, theirs was, I am certain, an interesting household, with his mother — who as a small girl had once helped make horse collars for the Confederate Army — speaking only French, and his father raising crops. As with all farming families of that day, Jesse and his brothers and sisters worked with his parents on the farm, but unlike many other parents, his folks knew that a good education was paramount. They insisted on the children attending school, even during harvest time, when every extra hand was needed.
At an early age, my father became interested in a new device called radio. He read voraciously to learn all he could about this wondrous technology, and saved every penny he could until he finally had enough to buy the parts to build a radio of his own. His mother — who was of necessity a very frugal woman — would have been dead-set against wasting money on something as frivolous as this, so he had to hide the parts in a haystack. When his brother Dennis found his stash and turned him in to his mother, Dad was punished, but ended up building the radio anyway. I don't know if it worked, but I suspect it did, thus pardoning him for "wasting money."
After graduating from high school, my father knew that he wanted to continue his education, but was keenly aware of the fact that his parents were not wealthy enough to pay his way. He initially went to work for AM and JC DuPont General Store as a window dresser and stock boy, and doing other tasks as needed. While working there, he also attended classes at a graphics and design school at LSU in Baton Rouge. After working at the store for several years, he went to work for the Louisiana Highway Department, and enlisted in the Louisiana National Guard.
My father met my mother, Viaud (pronounced vee-oh) Aleen Abrams, in Winn Parish, Louisiana. She had a familial connection to the colorful world of Louisiana politics in the 1930s, as her uncle was Oscar Kelly ("O.K.") Allen, a member of the famous Huey P. Long political machine, and was governor of the state from 1932 until his death in office in 1936. Her mother was a full-blooded Cherokee, and the blend with my dad's French heritage made for a lively — not tumultuous — relationship. On a trip to California in June of 1935, they decided to get married before returning home in El Paso, Texas.
Not long after they were married, my parents moved to Houston, where Dad had been hired as a draftsman, drawing maps for Shell Oil Company. It was in Houston, on August 30, 1936, that I was born.
One of Dad's favorite pastimes was operating his ham radio station. In my mind, I can still hear him repeating his call sign, "William Five Charlie Yoke Item," (W5CYI) several times, and then listening across the bands to see if anyone would respond. He would spend hours at a time chewing the fat over every conceivable topic with other radio amateurs in every state in the union and all over the world. I like to believe that these signals from his transmitter are well into the interstellar medium by now. He was a member of the American Radio Relay League, an organization devoted to ham radio, and would exchange QSL cards with other amateur radio operators to document his contacts. (For those not familiar with ham radio, the three-letter Q-codes were created in 1909 by the British government as a list of abbreviations for the use of British ships and coastal stations. QSL means either "Do you confirm receipt of my transmission?" or "I confirm receipt of your transmission.")
When I was only about 4 years old, half of the two-car garage at our house on Amherst Street in Houston was set up as my father's radio shack, and the rest was devoted to his small silk-screening company, where he made and sold simple signs. His home-built transmitter used mercury vapor rectifiers, the 866 vacuum tube, the venerable gas-filled tubes that would glow with a bluish color that fluctuated in brightness as he would talk. This was quite impressive to a little kid. Dad held a first-class radio operator's license, which would allow him to operate a full 1-kilowatt transmitter.
Among the hundreds of people with whom he communicated, my father made friends with some Japanese operators living in San Francisco around 1939 to 1940. He had a chance to visit them, and was astounded when he saw their equipment — huge assemblies capable of transmitting 50 kilowatts, far greater than the capacity of your typical amateur operator's rig. Their apartment, beyond being filled with a mass of radio equipment, afforded them a panoramic view of San Francisco Bay and ship movements. After the war, my father learned that his fellow "hobbyists" were actually Japanese spies. I guess that explained how they could afford such impressive equipment!
On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and shortly afterward, my father voluntarily enlisted in the Army Air Force, and soon left for Washington to take his enlistment physical.
In the summer of 1942, we moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where my father attended the Army Air Force Intelligence School. After graduating from the Intelligence School, my father was invited — inasmuch as anyone is invited to do anything in the military — to join the school's faculty. Many years passed before I realized what an honor it was to be so invited, an honor bestowed upon only the brightest and most talented students. That realization later became especially poignant to me, given the questions some have raised regarding my father's level of expertise and ability.
After completing his Intelligence School assignment, Dad was designated as an S-2 Intelligence Officer (his unit's principal staff officer, responsible for all military intelligence matters, including security operations, counterintelligence, training, and managing security clearance issues for personnel in his unit). His specific duties involved assessing and reporting enemy activity in the Philippines. Before he left, my parents sold the house in Houston, and my mother and I moved back to Louisiana and stayed with my grandmother at her house in Baton Rouge.
When the Japanese captured the Philippines, my father was evacuated, first to Australia, then finally back to the United States, where he was granted a short leave. One day early in 1944, I walked in the front door of our house and saw a military jacket lying on the couch. My mother was still outside unloading groceries from the car, and I ran back outside shouting, "He's here! He's here!" She dropped the bag she was holding and ran back into the house ahead of me, moving faster than I had ever seen her move before. We both plowed into the kitchen and saw him sitting there at the table, calm as you please, drinking a glass of milk and grinning from ear to ear.
The leave was brief, however, and all too soon he was assigned to the 509th Composite Bomb Group in Nevada as their S-2 intelligence officer. His pride was obvious as he told us that he was to be part of a special, hand-picked group, but he wouldn't tell us anything about what he would be doing, saying that his orders — and the work he would be doing — were classified Top Secret. Once he was settled in his new duty station, he wrote curious-sounding letters to my mother, obviously avoiding any discussion of his work in Nevada. In later years, he informed us that while he was in Nevada with the 509th, he helped to work out the details of dropping the atomic bomb on Japan.
As the day when the bombs were to be dropped approached, the 509th was reassigned to the island of Tinian, where he participated in briefing and supplying intelligence to the flight crews before the missions to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The Bombs That Ended the Second World War
The bomb on the left side of the following picture is "Little Boy," the uranium bomb that contained about 50 kilograms of U235 divided in separate portions. This bomb was not tested before deployment, because there was a virtual certainty that the design would work. This was the bomb carried by the Enola Gay that destroyed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The bomb on the right was "Fat Man," a plutonium bomb containing only about 10 or 12 kilograms of plutonium. The nuclear component in this bomb was only about the size of a grapefruit. Because it was not known for sure whether the implosion design would work, a test was necessary. A working device of this design was detonated in the New Mexico desert on the morning of July 16, 1945. This was the bomb carried by Bock's Car, which destroyed Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
After the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on September 2, 1945, on the battleship Missouri, my father returned home to Louisiana. Upon his return stateside just after Victory Over Japan day, my dad enrolled in radar school at Langley, Virginia, where he studied advanced radar technology, becoming an expert on the state-of-the-art radar devices of that time. While there, he studied all varieties of Rawin radar targets, including the ML-307 reflector used on the Mogul device later alleged to be the source of the material found at the Roswell site.
Given his extensive training and familiarity with the technology of the day, the later assertion made by some that my father confused UFO debris with a radar target is ludicrous. Had he not known what a radar target (such as the Rawin reflector used on the Mogul array) looked like, he would never have been allowed to graduate from the school.
Early in 1946, we moved to Roswell, New Mexico. Dad was stationed at Roswell Army Air Field, and we lived in base housing for a while before buying a house at 1300 West Seventh Street. On one of his tours in the summer of that year, Dad participated in "Operation Crossroads," the Able and Baker tests of the atomic bombs to be detonated at Bikini Atoll. In the Able test, a 21-kiloton bomb was detonated at an altitude of 520 feet over a fleet of target ships. In the Baker test, a similar device was detonated 90 feet under water. Of the two tests, the Able test — an air burst over the test fleet — caused comparatively little damage, while the Baker (sub-surface detonation) test sank many of the ships in the test fleet.
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 O (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.
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 Rudiak has an excellent rundown of his evaluations on the Internet, at www.roswellproof.com — Major Marcel's Postwar Service Evaluations of May 6, 1948, to August 2, 1948, and General Ramey's evaluation of August 19, 1948.
* 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.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Roswell Legacy"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Jesse Marcel, Jr., and Linda Marcel.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
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Table of Contents
Foreword by Stanton T. Friedman,
Introduction,
Chapter 1 The Path to Roswell,
Chapter 2 The Debris,
Chapter 3 Government Cover-Up? You Decide,
Chapter 4 What Was a Mogul Balloon?,
Chapter 5 Dr. Moore: Mogul Balloon Scientist,
Chapter 6 A Government Officials Admission,
Chapter 7 Other Visits,
Chapter 8 "Along for the Ride of My Life": Lindas Story,
Chapter 9 The Domino Effect,
Chapter 10 Life in the Cosmos: Beyond Roswell,
Epilogue,
Appendix History of the 509th,
Index,
About the Authors,