SECTION TWO
Reports of Bodies at the
Roswell AAF Hospital
This section examines the remaining portion of the Roswell Incident claims—the reports of “bodies” at the Roswell AAF hospital. Examinations of the various “crashed saucer” scenarios revealed references to the Roswell AAF hospital appeared in virtually all of them. Most of these were based on the account of one individual, W. Glenn Dennis. His undocumented and uncorroborated recollections, reportedly first related in 1989, over 42 years after the alleged Roswell Incident, are based on activities he allegedly encountered as a mortician providing contract services to the Roswell AAF hospital. Dennis’ recollections have, in turn, been interpreted by UFO theorists as evidence that the U.S. Army Air Forces recovered “alien” bodies and autopsied them at the Roswell AAF hospital in July 1947.
Dennis has been described as the “star witness” and his claims as the most credible of the Roswell Incident.[1] This, even though his most sensational assertions were not based on his own experiences but on information allegedly related to him by unidentified mystery witnesses.
The mystery witnesses were allegedly an Army Air Forces nurse and a pediatrician both assigned to the Roswell AAF hospital in 1947.[2] To casual observers, this account, which contains references to actual U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force personnel and activities, appears to have a ring of authenticity. However, when examined closely by Air Force researchers, the dates of events, the events themselves, and the people described as having participated in them, were found to be grossly inaccurate and totally unrelated to activities of July 1947.
The Account
The following is a summary of information provided by W. Glenn Dennis, who claimed he was a 22-year-old mortician at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell in July 1947, when he alleged these events occurred.*
On July 7, 1947, Dennis alleged he received a series of phone calls at the Ballard Funeral Home, where he worked, from the Mortuary Affairs officer at Roswell Army Air Field. He recalled that the mortuary officer inquired as to the availability of child sized caskets and procedures for preserving bodies that had been “laying out in the elements.”[3] Later that day he received an emergency ambulance call (the civilian mortuary for which he worked also provided an ambulance service) to respond to the site of a minor traffic accident in Roswell.[4] The accident victim was an “airman” stationed at Roswell AAF, and Dennis transported the airman to the hospital at the base.[5]
As Dennis walked into the hospital he noticed three military box-type ambulances, one or more of which contained what appeared to be “wreckage.”[6] He described the wreckage as being inscribed with odd markings or symbols and bluish-purplish in color.[7] He recalled that some of this wreckage was resting against the inside wall of the rear compartment of the ambulance and two pieces of it “looked kind of like the bottom of a canoe.”[8] He described other wreckage on the floor of the ambulance as being “all sharp” and as best he could tell “was like broken glass.”[9] He also recalled observing Military Policemen (MPs) standing at the back of two of these ambulances.[10]
When he went inside the hospital, he encountered a military nurse who was assigned there and with whom he was previously acquainted.[11] The nurse, who looked upset, was covering her mouth with a cloth and told him that “you’re going to get in a lot of trouble” and that he should “just get out of here.”[12] Dennis also stated that he encountered a military doctor who was assigned to the hospital, a pediatrician, with whom he was “pretty good friends” but did not speak with at that time.[13]
Having seen the wreckage in the rear of the ambulance and believing there had been an accident, he asked another officer in the hospital if there had been a plane crash. The officer, whom Dennis had never seen before, asked him: “Who in the hell are you?” When he responded he was “from the funeral home,” the officer summoned two MPs to escort him from the hospital.[14]
However, before Dennis and the two MPs had left the hospital, he heard someone say, “We’re not through with that SOB, bring him back here.”[15] When Dennis turned around, he observed a redheaded captain (in one version of these events Dennis is quoted as describing this person as a “big redheaded colonel”[16]) who said, “You did not see anything. There was no crash here. You don’t go into town making any rumors that you saw anything or that there was any crash ... you could get in a lot of trouble.”[17]
Angry about being called an SOB, Dennis informed the redheaded officer that he was a civilian, not under his authority, and that he, the redheaded officer, “can’t do a damn thing to me.”[18] The redheaded officer was alleged to have threatened Dennis by responding “Oh yes we can”.... “Somebody will be picking your bones out of the sand”.... “We can do anything to you ... that we want to.”[19] A black sergeant, whom Dennis recalled had accompanied the redheaded officer, allegedly stated he would “make real good dog food.”[20] Following this exchange, Dennis claimed he was “picked up ... arm and arm” and escorted back to his place of business by two MPs.[21]
The following day, July 8, 1947, Dennis attempted to telephone the nurse he had seen in the hall at the hospital to find out “what was going on.”[22] He stated that he was unable to reach the nurse but did reach another nurse, a “Captain Wilson,” who explained to him that the nurse he was trying to contact was not on duty, but “Wilson” would give her a message to call him.[23] The nurse called Dennis later that same day at the funeral home where he worked and agreed to meet with him at the officers’ club at Roswell AAF that afternoon.[24]
When the two met, the nurse appeared disturbed and ill.[25] Dennis asked her to explain what was going on when they met in the hospital the day before. The nurse explained that, in the course of her normal duties, she entered an examining room to get some supplies and encountered two doctors whom she did not recognize that “supposedly were doing a preliminary autopsy” on “three,” “very mangled,” “black,” “little bodies.”[26] The doctors requested the nurse remain in the room because they needed her assistance.[27] She allegedly explained that there was a terrible odor in the room that made both her and the doctors ill.[28] Due to this terrible odor and inadequate ventilation, the nurse allegedly told Dennis that the autopsies were moved to another facility on the base and then “everything” was taken to “Wright Field” (now Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio).[29]
The nurse described the little bodies in detail and even provided a diagram.[30] She described “little bodies” three to four feet in length that had large, “flexible,” heads, and concave eyes and noses.[31]
After this meeting Dennis claimed he never saw the nurse again, and he was told she had been shipped out the same afternoon (July 8, 1947) or the next day (July 9, 1947).[32] However, some time later Dennis received a letter from the nurse that indicated she was in London, England.[33] Dennis stated that he tried to respond to the nurse, but his letter was returned stamped “return to sender” and “deceased.”[34] After receiving this letter, he inquired at the base about the nurse and was told by “Captain Wilson” that she didn’t know where the nurse was, but there was a rumor that she and several other nurses had been killed in a plane crash while on a training mission.[35]
Some years later, Dennis stated that he visited the unidentified military pediatrician he had seen at the hospital.[36] The pediatrician had since left the military and set up practice in Farmington, N.M.[37] Dennis said he and the pediatrician discussed the incident of years past but was stopped short when the pediatrician told him that he was consulted regarding this incident, but that “it was completely out of [his] field of medicine,” then ended the discussion.[38]
Based on this account, UFO theorists have presented the following assertions:
a. Dennis, the “missing” nurse, and the unidentified pediatrician inadvertently stumbled onto the highly classified autopsies of alien bodies at Roswell AAF hospital in July 1947.
b. The two mysterious doctors at the hospital were sent to Roswell AAF from a higher headquarters to conduct the autopsies after which the bodies were transported to what is now Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
c. The bluish-purplish wreckage that looked like the bottom of a canoe in the rear of the ambulance, were “escape pods” from a flying saucer flown by the aliens that crashed in the Roswell area.
d. Dennis was forcibly removed from the hospital and threatened with death by the redheaded officer because he had witnessed some of these activities.
e. The nurse was kidnapped, possibly murdered, and all records that she ever existed were systematically destroyed by government agents, also because she witnessed these activities.
As in other accounts examined in this report, the episodes described here became part of the Roswell Incident only because the witness claimed they occurred at a very specific time, July 7–9, 1947. These dates coincide with an actual event: the retrieval of experimental Project Mogul research equipment that was erroneously reported as a flying disc (see Section One).[39] If the events described here occurred at any other time—years, months, weeks, or even days before or after July 7–9, 1947—they might be considered unusual to an uninformed person, but certainly not part of the Roswell Incident.
Air Force research revealed that the witness made serious errors in his recollections of events. When his account was compared with official records of the actual events he is believed to have described, extensive inaccuracies were indicated including a likely error in the date by as much as 12 years.