Popular Culture Review Vol. 19, No. 2, Summer 2008 | Page 89

Roswell 85 witnesses including former Roswell mortician Glenn Dennis, who claims he received inquiries from the air base about the availability of numerous child-size coffins, and procedures for embalming bodies that had been exposed to the weather for several days. Springfield MO. resident Gerald Anderson also came forth and spoke about what he remembered from when he was five years old living with his family in New Mexico in 1947. In an interview with the Springfield News-Leader, he stated: “We all went u p . . . to it (a large silver disk). There were three creatures, three bodies, lying on the ground underneath this thing in the shade. Two weren’t moving, and the third one obviously was having trouble breathing, like when you have broken ribs. There was a fourth one (that). . . apparently had been giving first aid to the others.” Then, Anderson claims, the military arrived, warned everybody this was top secret, to forget what they saw, and “unceremoniously” ushered everybody away. The skeptic’s choice UFO Crash at Roswell (Saler, Ziegler & Moore; 1997) concedes Anderson agreed to and passed a lie detector test about his viewing the crashed saucer with the alien bodies, but also notes he was only five years old at the time and said in his original statement that at first he thought they were “plastic dolls.” The authors go on to say that looking like “plastic dolls” is a strange way to describe dead aliens, and that what he really saw were the anthropomorphic test dummies that the military was allegedly dropping from weather balloons in the mid 1950s. In Case Closed, the 1997 Air Force report on Roswell, Captain James McAndrew critiques Anderson’s testimony. He says when he first saw the craft he thought it was a “blimp,” and “he didn’t really get very close,” but thought he saw four bandaged crew members and at first thought they were “plastic dolls.” He also described attempts by persons in his party to communicate with one of the “crew members.” Soon after, other civilians arrived, followed by military personnel “screaming and hollering” to the civilians “this is a military secret,” started recovery of the alien craft and crew. Anderson also says he recalled the military threatening civilians with imprisonment or death before escorting them out of the area. McAndrew’s official rebuttal states the terms “blimp” to describe the crashed vehicle and “dolls” to describe the crew “suggests that a balloon with an anthropomorphic dummy payload” was the foundation for this testimony. He also “concludes” that his assertion “they were all wearing one-piece suits . . . a shiny silverish-gray color, trimmed in . . . maroon-like cording” is probably a reference to a standard issue, gray, Air Force flight-suit used to outfit the dummies and red duct tape used in the tests to prevent air from filling the flight suits. His recollection that they had “bandages” on their bodies were probably refers to the tape and nylon webbing used to prevent flailing of the dummy’s arms and legs, McAndrew documented. He said the “bandages” were probably the chest and shoulder straps for the dummies’ parachutes. The report questions the validity of Anderson’s testimony, because of his age at the time, and because he states “he didn’t really get very close.” But it goes on to explain every detail of everything he saw seemed to be accurate, but