The Roswell Incident

(tucking a family bag of crisps into his corduroy jacket) Discovered fire? No, Hargreaves, but look who's holding the match: the same press officer who sent out the "flying disc" release on 8 July 1947 signed this affidavit in 2002, so he's at both ends of the story. The Air Force has changed its explanation twice since then, and I'd like to know why the one man who was in the room ends where he started.

(snapping his notebook shut) Fair hit about the uncle, Danvers: maybe the phrase came from the neighbours first. But it was a US Army Air Field that put those words out to the Associated Press, and if our man spent his retirement building a museum to his story, then 114 North Main Street, Roswell, is our first stop, research library and all.

(squeezing his lanky frame into the spaceship cockpit exhibit, wellies jammed against the controls) Bit snug for an egg-shaped craft twelve to fifteen feet long, Danvers, but our man said no windows, so at least I'm not missing the view. And before you point at the alien autopsy display, yes, I know that film was staged in a London living room. That's why I'm heading for the research library next, and not the waxworks.

(tapping the diagram, then flipping his notebook open) I'll give you the shopping list, Danvers: foil, paper and sticks is a very close match. But look at the dates on the government's own Roswell files: they run from 4 June, the day Flight 4 launched, to 10 July, the day Alamogordo put on its balloon show for the press. That's my own theory, not proof, but it looks to me like somebody decided the answer was a balloon and then drew the file's edges around it, so I want to know what's sitting just outside those dates.

(pressing his binoculars to the fence, wellies sinking into the dust) Look at that, Danvers: rows and rows of retired airliners, more than three hundred of them parked out here in 2020. They brought them to the desert to be forgotten, which is what I think happened to this place's 1947 story. Somewhere past that 13,000-foot runway was Building 84, and I'd love to know whether anyone's thought to check if it's still standing.

(turning slowly in the scrub, the wind tugging at his curls) Eleven years is a good catch, Danvers, I'll give you that: once the base had gone there was nobody left to contradict anyone, but I'd ask whether there was also nobody left to keep people quiet. Out here it was several acres of foil, tape and sticks, and Brazel's daughter remembered flower patterns on the tape, which doesn't sound much like a flying saucer, I'll admit. So here's my headline for Hargreaves: "ROSWELL: THE ARMY SAID DISC, THE AIR FORCE SAID BALLOON, THEN IT SAID DUMMIES, AND THOSE WERE YEARS TOO LATE."

(sliding the receipt back across the desk with a sheepish grin) Fair enough, Hargreaves, print the dates as fact and put my bit in as a question with my name under it: why does the government's file start and stop exactly where the balloon story does? As for the crisps, they were an investigative expense, because a man can't think about a craft with no windows, wings or landing gear on an empty stomach.