PART 3.
I made good time driving from Central Jersey to Philadelphia. My destination wasn’t hard to find, about half-way between the big city and King of Prussia, PA., a retirement community of neat cracker-boxes with the catchy name “Leisure Acres”. A typical, depressing, cookie-cutter, tax-abated retiree Gulag. Cops called ’em “Seizuretowns” .
I’d taken a cop cruiser, a black Ford Crown Victoria sedan with all the trimmings and PA Troopers just waved hello as I tooled by clipping seventy-five to eighty MPH. Perks of the job.
Wilbur Stickel was a bear of a man. Actually, walrus was more accurate – his Pancho Villa mustache hung down past his lower lip and must’ve made eating his morning oatmeal quite an adventure. Despite his ample midsection, it was clear that in his youth Wilbur must’ve been a force to reckon’ with.
Stickel’s most striking characteristic, though, were eyes – big, clear blue orbs, positively riveting in their intensity. Intelligent eyes, capable of visually fillleting another man and getting down deep into his soul. Not a guy to trifle with. And if he warmed up to you at all, it was gonna’ take time. I didn’t rush and leaned on my introduction from his son – hard.
“Mr. Stickel, your son tells me you had an interesting career in the Air Force – back in the fifties….” I modulated my voice carefully and tried my best to look sincere. “I’m investigating an old chestnut, a cold case file….”
“Sit down, son” Stickel growled as he gestured me towards a lazyboy recliner. “That used to be my favorite. Now I can’t sit there anymore…cause of all the fiddlin’ the damn doctors are doing with my privates….Sure beats all Hell gettin’ old”.
He sat down across from me on a tube-steel kitchen chair he’d obviously place there in anticipation of my visit. I could see Wilbur was an always-prepared kinda’ guy. But those eyes…..they burned right through me…….he had my number the minute I walked through his door.
“Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?’ He asked in an all-business tone.
“Now my son tells me you’re investigating what happened to your Dad back in the fifties. At Bell Labs. A Hit and Run. Start talkin’, Soldier”.
What can I say. Cops usually have the edge in an interview – the badge, the “apparent authority” schtik. This guy didn’t give a damn about any of it. It was his way or the highway. But there was a brutal honesty about him that I trusted. Like Bill Shocklee.
For the next hour I talked – and Stickel just sat quietly. At one point he got up and returned with a bottle of Poland Spring water for me. But mostly he just pinioned me with his eyes like I was a bug under his microscope.
When I finally shut up, I realized Stickel had broken into a wry grin and was gently shaking his head from side to side. It meant “No” in any language.
“Son, you sure you wanna’ be diggin’ in this old weed-infested garden?” He asked in a voice about two decibels above a whisper. “Your Dad’s been gone many years now…..this gonna make anything right? This gonna make you sleep better – or just drive you farther down some private road to madness?”
I guess at that point my dam broke. In a quivering and cracking voice that even surprised myself I let it all out. I was no longer a cop. I was a child
.
“Yes it will!!” I spat out. “It’s bad enough I grew up without him – but I’ve been a cop long enough to know something ain’t right….I’ve got to know! You can help me or not Mr. Stickel. But either way, I’m going where this takes me….it’s something I’ve got to do.”
He regarded me in silence for what seemed to be too long of a time. Long enough for a man of character to wrestle with his conscience and wring his hands. He then fixed his disarming eyes on a point beyond his porch window and manicured lawn – and slowly spoke with a determined look on his face.
“I’m undergoing chemotherapy for prostate cancer. Seems it’s spread throughout my lower area. Don’t look too good. Doc’ says I’m lookin’ at a year or so – maybe less. Don’t tell my son……..Don’t want him upset, ya’ know…” Stickel then looked back at me, determined as ever.
“You know how this diagnosis makes me feel?” He asked.
I took a moment to ponder the question, just hoping not to piss him off.
“I would guess angry, Sir.” I said as respectfully as possible. His bellowed response nearly knocked me over.
“Wrong, Soldier!!! ”
As he spoke, his eyes blazed.
“It makes me so far half-past give-a-shit that I’m gonna answer your questions. There’s maybe me and four others alive today that got the information you’re looking for – and if we don’t tell ya’, the facts will be gone forever…..If they take my pension, screw ’em! My wife, Winnie passed on last year……Ahh – I’m just tired of all the lies anymore….screw them and screw their secrets..”
Stickel shifted about on his kitchen chair – discomfort registered on his face every few minutes – and he started to talk. I didn’t say another word for an hour.
“What I’m about to tell you is a mixture of hearsay, top secret facts, eye-witness accounts and a healthy dose of myth and mystery, Son. Listen up!!! You’ll learn something about how the good ole’ USA handles truth and what the Hell our country has become….”
“I caught the tail end of World War II in the Pacific as a US Army Air Corps Lieutenant working at radar installations and wound up at White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico when they established it there in 1945. Stayed at ‘Sands for about ten years, and was folded into the Air Force when it became its own branch of service in 1947.
I was in charge of a technical security detail – the United States’ cutting edge radars were the envy of the world and we were constantly worried about espionage. From the Communists, mostly. All the big nuclear scientists were there – and a score of those German Nazi bastards we got under Operation Paperclip. There was always somebody being investigated and some shipment of something marked Top Secret coming in or going out, real hush-hush. Trucks and cargo planes arriving at all hours of the day and night – real frantic activity.
Hell, we thought we were making the world a safer place at the time. Wish to God I’d known the truth back then….
.
I got to know a lot of guys throughout the Air Force security network, especially at other bases, because of all the movement that was happening with troops and equipment. Materiel Logistics – that sort of thing.
The scientists were a nightmare because they’d move around so often, doing pieces of their experiments at Los Alamos, testing at (what later became) Holloman Air Force Base and other lab work at White Sands. And there were numerous other US Government Labs and scattered throughout the American Southwest that didn’t even have names – just numbers.
We’d have to keep track of the eggheads on their jaunts to those weird numbered places, too. It was crazy! But, Hell – I was young and we were Patriots. Every day we thought the future of our country hung in the balance. HoooRah!
So we’d travel the circuit of Air Force and US Government Lab facilities throughout New Mexico and the Southwest mostly moving materiel around and baby-sitting scientists and professors with Top Secret credentials. That’s where I picked up the real skinny ’bout what I now call The Great Lie….
It all went down in 1947. That’s when the shit hit the fan.
My best buddy in those days was a fella’ named Bill Eakley – he was Assistant Provost Marshall at Roswell Army Air Field in Roswell, New Mexico (later renamed Walker Air Force Base). It was home to the infamous 509th Bomb Group – the first group of special B29 Superfortresses to carry Atomic Bombs. The 509th was ready 24/7 to airlift at nukes anywhere in the world.
Understandably, Roswell Base had some pretty serious security protocols. It was Bill Eakley who told me what happened on the night of July 7, 1947. I later was put in charge of the Security Detail that handled the stuff at White Sands…. Debris we all called it ….as if the dead things Eakley handled was debris!!!
But first things first – I don’t wanna’ get off track. Eakley wrote it all down in a letter to me before he died. One of three copies. I don’t know what he did with the rest of ’em. But this I do know: Bill Eakley was the best friend a man could have and he was honest. The man was decent and truthful – a real Christian.”
Stickel reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew and old, yellowed envelope. He handled it carefully – almost with veneration – as if it were a religious icon or an original Gospel of Saint Paul. Slowly he extracted a few pages of a withered letter on the face of which was script probably written by a founatin pen. For a man with big hands, he was surprisingly gentle as he touched his delicate treasure. He positioned comically small half-lens reading glasses on his veined nose, squinted and recommenced his narrative.
“Eakley says here that on July 7, 1947, during a night of severe thunderstorm activity an explosion occurred on some scrubby ranch land in Roswell, New Mexico – just outside of Roswell Base.
A local rancher in Roswell by the name of Mac Brazel (a fella’ named Foster owned the spread) was out the next day checking his livestock on horseback when he saw silver metallic debris, like from an aircraft, strewn throughout his grazing area. His stock was spooked and cowering in a corner of a field. Brazel followed a deep gash, about the width of a driveway, straight through and up about a mile of ranch land until he got to the end of it.
Brazel estimated he was close to a wash or gully area they called “The Corona” at that point. There he saw a strange, pie-shaped object wedged into the side of an arroyo with a sizeable chunk torn out of its side. Brazel first thought it was some kind of experimental military airplane.
When he got closer he realized it was all flat with no wings or other discernable control surfaces like planes he’d seen in the war. It was about fifty feet in diameter, two-thirds of it imbedded into that desert mound. Brazel rode his horse back to his house and called the Sheriff of Chaves County. The Sheriff called Roswell Army Air Field and that’s when my buddy, Eakley, got involved.
In no time the whole area was cordoned off, the rancher was placed under arrest in the Roswell Army Air Field Brig and a General named Ramey was issuing press releases that an “Air Balloon Accident” had happened the night before scattering tin foil all over the Foster Ranch property in Roswell, New Mexico. Some rancher named Mac Brazel “was kind enough” to have reported it.
Eakley was assigned about thirty special Air Corps guys with security clearances. They were issued Jeeps, side arms and radios and were dispatched to the crash site. Once there they commenced a wide perimeter search, mapping the place and made a photographic grid of the crash site and main debris field.
Bill Eakley’s unit broke radio silence a few hours after they’d completed their preliminary work. The had to report something. I’ll read it in his words:
” …..we came upon the bodies of whoever or whatever had crash landed that disc. So Help me God, I still shiver at the memory of what we found.
Four small bodies were scattered down the back of the arroyo, two had limbs missing – obviously torn from their sockets by impact – and had expired. The third was on its face, dead.
The fourth was propped up in a shady area behind some flat rocks nearby. It was moaning something fierce, sounds that were a cross between a wounded bear and a growling hound dog. It looked like a pitifully thin child with an adult’s head. Had big, black eyes like a cat. Makes my flesh crawl to think about it.
The medics moved in and blocked our view of the bodies. Later, trucks arrived and we packed the things into body bags for transport to Wright Field in Ohio. There were four body bags. The alive one expired soon after the medics tried to render medical assistance.
The Brass on site took particular care to remind us all that what we were cleaning up was classified – and that we’d all be better off if we forgot everything we saw. Forever. Before long, big hydraulic cranes arrived and extracted the disc from the arroyo in which it was lodged. Two unique, tandem flatbeds later hauled it away, side-by-side.
For two days the crash site was a tent town of servicemen sifting soil for debris and combing the desert surroundings for anything they overlooked. Floodlights were set up so everybody – scientists included – could work around the clock.
It seemed to be a well-rehearsed operation. They were clearly ready, from the scientists and specialized equipment to the quick-response shock troops that were deployed. Everybody knew their job and executed it flawlessly. It seemed like they’d all done it before…..
A scientist named Vannevar Bush was in charge. Rumor was Dr. Bush was flown in from Washington DC on direct orders of President Harry S. Truman. Everybody – and I do mean everybody – was kissin’ his ass.
Bush had some young toady assistant – a guy named Pierce wearin’ a Bell Labs ID ’round his neck. They always talked real quiet like off to the side….whisperin’….but I did hear ’em say two words: Power Source. Seems like they were frustrated because they couldn’t find one. Another time I overheard Bush, Pierce and somebody they referred to as Dr. Menzel talking – but the only word I could pick up was: Telemetry.”
Wilber Stickel got up and excused himself, muttering “Bathroom break….” Sounds of wretching filled the house. A faint smell of vomit still clung to him as he resumed his kitchen chair perch. He shook his head a bit to chase out the cobwebs and continued reading Bill Eakleys’ letter.
“We returned to Roswell Army Air Field with ’bout a dozen truckloads of debris, chunks of wreckage – and four child-size body bags. A big-deal egghead named Bronk was Chief Medical Officer in charge of the dead bodies.
We packed the body bags in dry ice inside some long ordinance crates we scrounged up and nailed the lids on. There was an awful smell comin’ outta’ those body bags by then and we had to improvise a solution.
Everything was loaded onto four DC-3 Military Transports and taken to Wright Field and other locations. The scientists had marked all the crates with destinations and created detailed manifests that were attached to each container. Some were sent to White Sands and Los Alamos for further examination by scientists there.
I returned to the crash site for days afterwards to assist in mopping up operations. Bulldozers were brought in and the site was graded and filled in to its previous desert-scrub condition. Any debris that we picked up – small pieces, mostly – were put in a bag and turned in to base security. We watched each other like hawks. Everybody kept their hands outta’ their pockets……”
Stickel shifted his weight in his chair and cleared his throat, a tinge emotional.
“Rest of the letter is personal like….no need for you to hear it….but what I’ve read sets the stage for where I come in. And here’s the kicker for you, Boy! Your payday for that long drive down here….”
Eight of them crates Bill Eakley wrote about came to White Sands, where I supervised off loading them from the DC-3s and getting them to our lab scientists.
Damned if as soon as those DC-3 transports landed from Roswell a drab green Army vehicle pulls up and out jumps some guy named “Hunsaker” – who immediately starts yellin’ orders about where to take which crate. And – sure as I’m sitting’ here – who gets out of that Army vehicle after him? That big Nazi Bastard Werner von Braun, that’s who!
Dour-faced German son of a bitch looked like he was goose steppin’ even when he was standin’ still. He didn’t say anything – just kept whispering to Hunsaker and pointing.
It was Hunsaker that was doin’ all the yellin’, given everybody directions – not in a pleasant voice, either. Amoung ourselves, me an’ the boys referred to him as “Cocksucker” for the few days he was there.
After ’bout a week or so, four of the wooden crates – those same crates that came from Roswell Base, each the size of a Jeep – were flown out again on a DC-3 Transport, this time to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. I supervised loading ’em on board that DC-3. I read their manifests and destination. Papers said it was “navigation equipment” headed to “Bell Labs, New Providence, NJ.
That’s all I got for ya’, Son……”
The hair on my neck was standing straight up. Not wanting to tire the poor old man any further, I shook his hand, assured him of my gratitude, and started back to New Jersey. But as I pulled out onto the highway outside of Stickel’s retirement community, safe inside the solitude of my Ford Crown Vic, I whispered out loud – “Bingo“.
By the time I got back to Central Jersey the sun had already set. I needed some food real bad. My stomach was sour from bad coffee and the donuts I’d picked up along the way were sitting in my gut like lumps of cement. But I had one more stop to make.
At Berkeley Heights PD Headquarters I called my FBI Washington Archivist buddy and – lucky for me he was working late – asked him to run down whatever he had on a homicide in the early seventies of one “Jock Merton” in Neshanic station, New Jersey. My gut bothered me about this guy. Talk about something that just didn’t add up.
I also called a Prosecutor friend of mine at the Somerset County Prosecutors’ Office – the NJ County where the Township of Neshanic Station was located. Terrry Lawrence was a good guy and we worked many a case together. Berkeley Heights shared a long border with Somerset County and there were always criminal activities going on of mutual interest. Terry – as usual – was at his desk.
“Terry!!! How the Hell ya’ doin’!” I bellowed into the phone. We exchanged a few pleasantries, brought each other up to date about our families and then got down to business. “Jock Merton” of Neshanic Station. Homicide Investigation. Early Seventies. What’s in the file?”
I was turning off my office lights a few minutes later when Somerset County Assistant Prosecutor Lawrence called back.
“Jesus Christ, Kovacs!!!!” He yelled into the phone. He was beyond non-plussed.
“What the Hell you gettin’ me involved in???? That Merton file is flagged – it’s freekin’ radioactive! Absolutely any inquiries about it must be immediately reported to the US Department of Defense in Washington, DC – their Espionage Unit!!! Sorry, buddy – I’m gonna’ have to give ’em your name because NCIC automatically linked to my County file request….”
I slowly talked Assistant Prosecutor Lawrence out of his tree, fed him a bunch of vague malarkey and got off the phone without sharing anything I’d learned in the last couple of days. I then reached into my desk and withdrew that pint of Cutty Sark I keep stashed for occasions like this and took a hearty swig.
Well now, I thought. This just gets better and better…….
END OF PART 3.
Copyright, 2021 Jon Croft
