Army vet recalls Roswell incident

In June or early July 1947, a farmer found strange debris while working on a ranch about 70 miles north of Roswell. He put some of it in a box and drove to the local sheriff. Neither man knew what to make of it, so the sheriff called Roswell Army Air Field, which sent two men to investigate. On July 9, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record, a newspaper, printed a story with the alarming headline: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region." Other than those facts, there appear to be few things people agree on regarding what has become known as "the Roswell incident."Six decades later, competing UFO enthusiasts promote their own theories, skeptics dismiss the spaceship claims as outrageous, and the military, which originally claimed all the fuss was over a weather balloon, now sticks to its story that it was an experimental spy craft.Escondido resident Milton Sprouse, 85, said he knows what happened in Roswell - not because he favors one theory over another, but because he was there.As for the outrageous stories of mysterious metal, alien corpses and a military coverup?It's all true, he said. Before arriving at Roswell Army Air Field in 1945 as a corporal and engine mechanic, Sprouse already had participated in an undisputable historic event.As a member of the 393rd Bomb Squadron assigned to the 509th Composite Group, Sprouse worked on the ground crew of Big Stink, one of the B-29 bombers stationed on the Pacific island of Tinian, where the two atomic bomb missions on Japan were launched to end World War II.After the war, the 509th Composite Group was reassigned to Roswell, where they were renamed the 509th Bomb Wing.

Sprouse continued to lead the ground crew of Big Stink, which had been renamed Dave's Dream after the pilot."There was nothing there but tumbleweeds blowing for miles," he said about arriving at Roswell in November 1945.