Roswell 1947 - Documents on the witnesses

AFFIDAVIT

1) My name is Glenn Dennis

(2) My address is: XXXXXXXXXX

(3) I am ( ) employed as: ____ ( ) retired,

(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 strange-looking writing on the material resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics. Also there were two MPs present.

(8) 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 preliminary 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 rumor 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

Signature witnessed by: Walter G. Haut