Chapter 2
GI Fires Upon an Unidentified Aerial Object
Following is a transcript of an interview between Mr. Francis P. Wall, a private first class in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and Mr. John Timmerman who is Project Manager for the photo exhibit of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in the Fall of 1987. It has not been edited in any way. This interesting event began at dusk and ended at about 9 pm local time.
“This event that I am about to relate to you is the truth, so help me God. (Note 1) It happened in the early Spring of 1951 in the country of Korea. We were in the Army infantry. I was in the 25th Division, 27th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, “Easy” Company (note 2). We were in what is known on the military maps as the Iron Triangle, near Chorwon. We were to the left of Chorwon, just across the mountain ridge from this city – town – whatever you want to call it.
It is night. We are located upon the slopes of a mountain, between the fingers of a mountain as they run down toward the valley below where there is a Korean village. Previously we have sent our men into this village to warn the populous that we are going to bombard it with artillery. Upon this night that I’m talkin’ about, we were doin’ just that. We had aerial artillery bursts comin’ in.
And we suddenly noticed down, with the mountains to our backs, we noticed on our right-hand side what appeared to be a jack-o-lantern come wafting down across the mountain.
And at first, no one thought anything about it. So we noticed that this thing continued on down to the village to where, indeed, the artillery air bursts were exploding. And we further noted, by the way, it had an orange glow in the beginning, we further noticed that this object would get right into… it was that quick that it could get into the center of an airburst of artillery and yet remain unharmed. And, subsequently, this time element on this, I can’t recall exactly, I would say anywhere from, oh, forty-five minutes to an hour all told.” Figure 6 is a sketch of the object made for the author by the witness on May 10, 1989.
“But then this object approached us. And it turned a blue-green brilliant light. It’s hard to distinguish the size of it, there’s no way to compare it. It pulsated. The light, that is, was pulsating. It wasn’t, ah, regular. Alright, this object approached us. I asked for and received permission from Lt. Evans, our company commander at that time (note 3), to fire upon this object, of which I did with an M-l rifle with armor-piercing bullets, or rounds in it.
And I did hit it. It must have been metallic because you could hear when the projectile slammed into it.
“Now why do you say, why would that, ah, bullet damage this craft if the artillery rounds didn’t? I don’t know unless they had dropped their protective field around ’em, or whatever. That this, ah, technology envisions, that they had to protect it. But the object went wild and it… the light was goin’ on and off and it went off completely once, briefly. And it was moving erratically from side to side as though it might crash to the ground. Then, a sound, which we had heard no sound previous to this, the sound of, like of, ah, you’ve heard diesel locomotives revving up.
(Note 4) That’s the way this thing sounded. And, then, we were attacked, I guess you would call it. In any event, we were swept by some form of a ray that was emitted in pulses, in waves that you could visually see only when it was aiming directly at you. That is to say, like a searchlight sweeps around and the segments of light you would see it coming at you.
“Now you would feel a burning, tingling sensation all over your body, as though something were penetrating you. And ah, so the company commander, Lt. Evans, hauled us into our bunkers. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We were scared. We did this. These are underground dugouts where you have peep holes to look out to fire at the enemy. So, I’m in my bunker with another man. We’re peeping out at this thing. It hovered over us for a while, lit up the whole area with its light that I’m telling you about, and then I saw it shoot off at a 45 degree angle, it’s that quick, just, it was there and was gone. That quick. And it was as though that was the end of it. But, three days later the entire company of men had to be evacuated by ambulance. They had to cut roads in there and haul them out; they were too weak to walk. And they had dysentery and then subsequently, ah, when the doctors did see them, ah, they had an extremely high white blood cell count which the doctors could not account for.
“Now let me inform you on this. In the military, especially the Army, each day you file a report, a company report. Now, we had a confab about that. What do we do about this. Do we file it in the report or not? And the consensus was “no.” Because they’d lock every one of us up, and think we were crazy. At that time no such thing as UFO had ever been heard of and we didn’t know what it was. And I still don’t know what it was. But I do know that since that time I have periods of disorientation, memory loss, and ah, I dropped from 180 pounds to 138 pounds after I got back to this country. And I’ve had great difficulty keeping my weight up. Indeed, I’m retired and disabled today.”
The following questions were asked the witness by Mr. Timmerman immediately following the above narrative.
Q. “What has been your employment since you were in the military?
A. “I was with the American tobacco company.”
Q. “In what capacity?”
A. “Manufacturing.”
Q. “In a plant near here?”
A. “Yes, In Reedsville.” (North Carolina)
Q. “I see. How long did you work in that plant?”
A. “Twenty six and one-half years.”
Q. “How long ago did you retire?”
A. “1969.”
Q. “I see. And at present you are retired?”
A. “I’m retired, yes, yes.”
Q. “OK…. Do you have the names of any of the men in that unit? Do you recall were any of
them from this part of the country?”
A. “No, no.”
Q. “They were from all over?”
A. “Uh huh (yes). They were from California…”
Q. “Did you maintain contact with any of them?”
A. “No, we’ve lost contact with them…so many of them got killed off after that.”
Q. “Well, it was 36 years ago too. Did you ever before now have occasion to discuss this case
with anyone else.”
A. “Yes. I’ve told my wife and my family – my wife and my children. I have related this story to them many times over, since comin’ back from Korea. But, you know how it is with things like that. They said, “uh huh,” and they’d go on, and that’s the end of it.”
Q. “Right. Well, this case, ah, there’s the possibility that we may have other cases, other reports in the file…”
A. ”Oh, there’s one thing I forgot. I’m not tryin’ to add to the story but there is one thing that’s important. You know I told you I fired at it with the M-l rifle… made contact. And the thing went wild like it was gonna’ fall.”
Q. “Right”
A. “Alright, subsequently, we opened up with everything we had and after that nothing would affect it…That one shot got it. But evidently, their defences were lowered, briefly, and when I connected, and when their defences were thrown back up, and after that, nothin’ could hit it.”
Q. “Did the bullets seem to just move right through it?”
A. “Well, they…”
Q. “There was no contact?”
A. “No contact. But the first time I did connect. And it was metallic because it was an armor piercing projectile from an M-l rifle. And we did hear the metal to metal, as it impacted.”
Q. “Was it almost instantaneously, because apparently the object wasn’t very far away.”
A. “It wasn’t far away, no. It was hovering right above us, like that, about like that ah, ceiling there…and apparently observing us.” (Note 5)
Q. “Yeh. I see.”
A. “It apparently had no hostile intent at that time, until I fired.”
Q. “Did you recall whether there was any sound associated with the event?”
A. “There was no sound until I hit the object. That’s what I’m tellin’ you, that this sound of locomotives revving up, diesel locomotives. Yeh, a deep sound, (cf. note 4) and that thing was winding up…and it, it recovered from this impact. And it was fully operational.”
Q. “So that the projectile you fired apparently didn’t cause any serious…”
A. “No, it recovered from it Ah,…but I did see the blue-green light on one of your pictures there… like I described to you.”
Q. “Did you…? The light that you saw was in this… (photo exhibit).”
A. “It was in one of the pictures here. It was orange in the beginning and then it changed to a
blue-green light”
Q. “I see.”
A. “I do believe that these things are real and I think that there is a cover-up, and we were ordered to say nothing about this. That shows you they are covering up…. It is foolish to believe that we have the only technology anywhere, you know? There are other intelligences …. Well, I hope, I wish…if I can raise up any of the names of the men, possibly, that is still alive, and I doubt if you could get them to come forth, but if I could, there would be some way to verify this.” “I’m sixty years old now, but back when I was younger there were three days I still can’t account for.”
Q. “Following the event?”
A. “Uh huh (yes), there’s three days I still can’t account for. Why, ever since I came back home. My wife can tell you about it but I still don’t remember.” (note 6)
Q. “Days here at home?”
A. “Uh huh (yes).”
Q. “And you had a period…”
A. “I’d have these extreme headaches. They’d have to send me home, put me in the hospital
and so forth.”
Q. “And they couldn’t explain what was going on?”
A. “Uh uh (no).”
Q. “That’s part of your medical history that Dr. R. would have?”
A. “Uh huh (yes)…. but you could talk to my wife, ah, what’s left of my family, half of them are in the grave… and they’ll tell you that I’ve told the same story many times. And if I was lyin’ I think I’d get mixed up in it after a while.”
I contacted Mr. Wall in May of 1989 to ask a number of other questions. Here are my questions and his answers.
Q. “Please try to estimate how long a period of time went by from the time your M-l rifle fired to the time you heard the round strike the object?”
A. “One to two seconds (best as I can remember).”
Q. “Did you ever have severe headaches from the time the object departed to one week later?”
A. “Yes.”
Q. “Please try to describe when they first started.”
A. “The next day or so after contact with the object.”
Q. “What other physical ailments did you experience within the first week after the experience?”
A. “Dysentery, nausea.”
Q. “Within the first week or so did you ever vomit?”
A. “Yes…for several days.”
Q. “Within the first month or so did your appetite change?”
A. “Yes… I lost my appetite.”
Q. “Within the first month or so did your thirst change?”
A. “Yes…my thirst increased.”
Q. “How many of the men in your company did you talk to about this strange event at the time?”
A. “Approximately 25 or more.”
Q. “Did any of the other men you talked to tell you things that were different from your experience?”
A. “No.”
Q. “Have you ever seen such an object before this time in Korea?’1
A. “No.”
Q. “Have you ever seen a similar object after this sighting?”
A. “No.”
Q. “What do you think the object was?”
A. “An alien spacecraft – nothing like I had ever seen.”
Q. “What compass direction (approximately) were your guns firing from the hillside toward the town?”
A. “North.”
Q. “What compass direction did you first notice the object?”
A. “East.”
Q. “What compass direction did the object finally disappear?”
A. “Forty five degrees up (and) then West”
Q. “When were you discharged from the Army?”
A. “June 1952.”
Q. “What type of military discharge did you receive?”
A. “Honorable.”
Notes:
- Mr. Wall’s name, rank, serial number, and other information was found on the official Army roster for his unit as of July 1951.
- Historical accounts by Marshall (1951), Michaelis and Davidson (1951), Pearl (1963), and Pullen (1954) provide interesting background information on the 27th Infantry Regiment “Wolfhounds”.
- Lt. Evans’ name and other information for him was found on the official Army roster for “E” Company.
- A very similar event took place on March 17, 1981 on the Columbia River, just east of Portland, Oregon. Several eyewitnesses described an orange spherical light which hung above the river while emitting a low throbbing, diesel engine sound that was tape-recorded. An analysis of this tape by the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, Chicago, Illinois could not identify it.
- The ceiling in the shopping mall where this interview took place was approximately 25 to 30 feet above the floor. Even for a very low muzzle velocity (say 900 fps), his estimate of 1 to 2 seconds duration from when his M-l fired to when he heard the projectile strike the object is clearly too long. Is it possible that he only heard the echo of his own rifle firing from the surface of the object?
- 6. It is unlikely that the light ray that was emitted from this object was the cause of his (much later) symptoms of his memory loss.
In another letter to Mr. Wall dated April 14, 19901 provided him with a list of 72 names of personnel who were in his company with the request that he try to recall (and mark on the letter) the names of as many of them as possible. His reply of June 1st was terse; he wrote the word “none”.
General Comments:
This close encounter of the first and second kind contains interesting corroborative data to the March 10, 1951 pilot sighting near Chinnampo, North Korea, the January 29, 1952 sighting by three military pilots flying near Wonson at night, the February 24, 1952 bomber crew sighting over Antung, and the May 31, 1952 pilot sighting south of Chorwon (all presented in the next chapter).
This particular sighting report also contains valuable details related to the nature of this aerial reality such as apparent three-dimensionality and mass, emitted noises and luminous radiation in a partially collimated fashion (in seeming reaction to the impact of the soldier’s rifle projectile), biological interaction (immediate skin sensations and subsequent skin surface and internal sequelae), and a responsiveness that is (allegedly) in direct response to the witness’ “aggressive” behavior. The identity of what is behind this phenomenon remains shrouded in mystery.
A number of issues of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft around the year 1950 were studied with regard to the kinds of American and Russian aerial devices that were in existence. There was no mention of any type of remotely piloted vehicles (RPV) nor other kinds of non-aerodynamic vehicles.