There were about 30 symbols, one right after another. These figures were solid; they were not line drawings. I don't recall what all of the symbols looked like or whether or not they repeated themselves. I do distinctly remember a few of them, however. One reminded me of a seal balancing a ball on its nose. The symbol was like a truncated pyramid with a solid ball over the apex, sort of like the pyramid with an eye over it on a dollar bill. I recall this symbol as being located more toward one end of the beam. The symbol located just to the right of this was an oblate spheroid. The spheroid sometimes would appear with two smaller spheroids below the larger spheroid, and sometimes above. As I recall, the next symbol had the same configuration, but it was reversed 90 degrees. To the right of these symbols was a simple oval, with the largest area of the oval being through the center section. Most of the individual symbols were about the same height and width. The symbols themselves were very close togetheralmost touching, but not quite.
I called my findings to the attention of my folks, showing my mother first because my dad was standing off to one side. They passed the I-beam back and forth between the two of them. At this point, I was getting a little excited, wondering what the symbols might represent. They seemed strange indeed. My dad was quite interested in the beam, and felt that the symbols might represent an alphabet of some sort. For me this was the centerpiece of the whole experience. Later I tried to reproduce the symbols I had seen, but could only draw a rough representation of what they looked like. The only one I clearly remember for sure is the truncated pyramid with a solid ball over the top of it, and I suppose that was because I could tie it in to a familiar object-a seal balancing a ball on its nose.
Years later, shortly before my dad died, we discussed the shapes and colors of the symbols. I asked, without hinting to him, "What color were they?" He responded, "Oh, they were a purplish color with what looked like some kind of weird language in the form of strange shapes." His memories of the symbols were very much in sync with mine.
There was one other type of debris, though, that I didn't see in the material my dad brought home, but he said it was in some of the other debris. Many years later, he told my wife, Linda, that there were fine strands resembling fishing line in some of the material. These could very possibly have been a type of fiber optics.
I recall that Bill Brazel, Mac Brazel's son, also described seeing what he called fishing line in some of the debris. He went so far as to say that when a light was shown on one end, it was transmitted to the other end similar to a fiber-optic cable. However, as rve said, I never encountered anything like that in the debris that my father brought home.
Some UFO enthusiasts see significance in the fact that there were pretty dramatic advancements in fiber technology in the years immediately after the crash. Indeed, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, fiber-optic technology took a great leap forward. But I tend to think that's just a coincidence. There's really nothing mysterious about the development of fiber optics; it can be traced right back to the people who developed it. We humans are pretty smart, after all, and don't need help from our extraterrestrial friends to make scientific advancements.
Another question I have been asked throughout the years is whether or not there was any kind of smell associated with any of the wreckage. I don't remember any kind of smell whatsoever. Had it been Bakelite, it would have had a very distinctive smell because of the bonding agent that holds it together. And apparently the balloons that were used in Project Mogul emitted a very strong odor of neoprene as well. But there was no odor whatsoever from the materials my father brought home.
After we had looked at the debris for about 15 or 20 minutes, we placed the material back in the cardboard box it came in, and I accompanied my dad outside as he put the box into the back seat of our car. Standing next to the car, I noticed that the trunk was open. It was dark, and I couldn't make out a whole lot of details, but I could see that there were several more boxes of debris in the trunk.
We all went back into the house, and my mother swept the floor, because some small pieces of the materials were still on it. Therefore, a few tiny fragments were just swept out our back door. We had recently laid a concrete slab at the door for a washing machine; had this incident happened before we laid the slab, some of the material might have been preserved under the concrete, and perhaps could have later been retrieved by investigators. But by the time Roswell captured the attention of the world again, those minute fragments were long gone.
My mother and I retired to our respective bedrooms, and my dad took off for the base at that time, or early that morning, with his precious cargo. He had a very long day ahead of him. As I've noted, Dad had shown my mother and me only a small portion of the debris that was collected on the Foster Ranch, and there was much more investigation to be done.
After the debris was taken to the base, apparently Colonel Blanchard had a look at it and ordered the material to be flown to Fort Worth so General Ramey, the 8th Air Force commander, could inspect it. It was flown in a B-29 under armed guard. The plane had to fly at low altitudes because the guards were in the unpressurized cargo compartment with the debris. My dad was also on that flight, and it was he who displayed the debris to Ramey in his office. Ramey had him point out on a map the exact location where the debris was collected, then ordered it to be flown to Wright-Patterson Army Air Field in Dayton, Ohio.
When my dad returned to Roswell, he cautioned my mother and me never to tell others what we had seen that night. In talking with him later, he confirmed that this material was from an unearthly craft, and I was certainly convinced of this myself. My father had gone to radar and intelligence school, so he was pretty well versed in the types of radar targets of the day. This debris was not from anything he had ever seen. But there was more to it than that. It seems that he had seen other things that convinced him that this was not of human manufacture. I didn't know what made him so strong in his beliefs, but because I had seen some pretty unusual features in the debris myself, and I trusted my father's expertise, it didn't take much to convince me that he was right.
Later, when we talked about the crash site, he described a large area heavily scattered with metallic debris from a single impact point that scarred the earth. The material spread out from this point into a triangular-shaped area 200 to 300 feet wide at the end of the field, and 3/4 of a mile long. As far as the volume of the debris, just to give you an idea, they had to use a C-54 Skymaster-a large cargo aircraft-to transport it all. I later found out that the pilot of the aircraft was a Captain Henderson, who apparently saw far more than just the debris from the impact site. Based on some interviews with his family, he may in fact have seen the remains of a crew.
Although I had been told not to talk with my friends about this matter, that did not keep me from going over in my maid the significance of what I had seen. I know that my dad had been very excited about the debris, and l clearly recall him using the words flyingsaucer in reference to the materials. Even though he was the epitome of discretion after that, I never forgot that night in our kitchen.
And how could I not be excited? I have never really been a fan of science fiction, but this was not fiction. For me this was science reality and it was a more exciting reality than any of the science I had learned in school. It was an event that definitely changed me. From that evening on, my life took on a different meaning. I could never look at the night sky the same way again, because, for all I knew, someone else might be looking back.