The UFO that came to Thanksgiving.
Posted: Thursday, November 20, 2008
by Mike Fak
http://mikefak.com
In the early winter of 1969, I was in advanced infantry training at Fort Gordon, Georgia. The AIT, as it was called, was the second eight-week-training session a soldier got back then after the basic training was over. I imagine it was to make sure we young soldiers actually knew enough to be sent overseas.
I'm not sure if the four months of training did anything to get a person ready to shoot at people and in turn be shot back at. I will leave that for others who spent time in the triple canopy jungles of Vietnam to tell. I do know four months of constant exercise had made us all lean, mean, fighting machines.
The premise was explained to us. The company would march out five miles into the middle of nowhere. We would dig a foxhole perimeter and then the platoon sergeants and assistant platoon sergeants would try to infiltrate our perimeter.
I was a kid from Chicago and not real familiar with backwoods living and I recall the march was almost surreal. The air was freezing for Georgia. In fact it would set a record cold temperature for the night. The sky was clear but there was no moon and I never had been in such total darkness before in my life. A great many of us were from big cities and more than once someone would joke, "Where are the streetlights on this road?"
When we arrived at the base camp, we were relieved to see old foxholes, already dug and poorly refilled marking our area for us. In just an hour we all had nice deep holes to snuggle in on this freezing night.
I will never forget looking out into the night with my trusty M-14 filled with a clip of blanks and not being able to see anything. And I mean anything. There was a tree line about 300 yards in front of me but I couldn't prove it. The only thing I could see was "dark".
The first few hours weren't bad. It was still early evening and the cold was just settling in. We also were having fun calling in artillery support for our perimeter whenever someone thought they saw something moving in front of our foxholes.
Of course no one was seeing anything but it was fun to watch the huge aerial flares burst over our position. As the flares neared the ground they also proved there was a forest in front of us but no drill sergeants.
At about 1:00 am, meaning Thanksgiving was upon us, we started to freeze in the fifteen degree temps. Then something happened that made us all forget about the cold. Off to our right, a small light hung in the sky about 20 degrees up from the horizon.
I assumed it was a chopper from the base coming right at us since it didn't seem to be moving either left or right.
In the dark it is impossible to tell if a light in the sky is a mile away or thirty but it was a pronounced light that just seemed to hang in the air like an errant star that had wandered too close to earth.
Then as my foxhole buddy and I looked at the light, it moved about thirty degree to our left, almost in front of our foxhole, and then went straight down in an instant and disappeared.
Immediately some of the guys in the other foxholes near us started chatter. Keeping expletives deleted, the gist of the queries was," What in the heck was that?
A few minutes later we received an order from command to go into the woods directly in front of our location and put out some small fires in the timber no doubt started by one of the flares.
Although a little spooked, it felt good to get up and walk our frozen legs back to warmth.
When we went about two hundred yards into the tree line, a small clearing was right in front of us. In that clearing were several very small grass fires that we went about stomping out with our boots.
As I walked around with about seven or eight of my platoon buddies making sure no fire would start back up, I was struck by two things. First in the middle of this 100 foot diameter clearing were a few small saplings that were crushed down and bent over. The second fact was I noticed that all the grass was bent down amid smoldering pockets and that the burned area was almost in the form of a perfect circle.
I mentioned this to the group of big city boys, who were in the woods after seeing a strange light seemingly land where we stood. They all agreed with my observations, so we did the only thing we could think of. We ran like hell back to our foxholes.
When we got back, we were told it was too cold for the maneuver and to just hunker down and get some sleep. To make up for this dumbness the Captain even had trucks brought in to drive us back to the barracks in the chilling dawn.
None of us talked about that night for over a week.
Then one Saturday when we all had several brewskies in us the event came out along with the opinions. One group said it had to be a flare that caused the burn as none of us ever saw a light go back up in the sky, which was true.
A second group said it was probably some kind of Army aircraft practicing on a bunch of newbie soldiers.
Of course there were a few who were convinced that we had been visited by little green men and we just all missed the takeoff while we weren't looking.
To be honest, I have no idea what happened that night. Maybe it was a flare and the grass just happened to burn evenly in a cylindrical pattern. But what about the crushed trees and all the grass laying on it side that we all saw? Maybe something did land but where did it go? And then again maybe in the cold, I and all my buddies nodded off and had the same dream. I'm quite certain the real answer is not for any of us to ever know.
In a way that might be something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, especially if the Aliens who landed that night are reading this and know where I live.
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Top-level comments on this article: (5 total)Fak, you're a great storyteller! (No pun intended) Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. —AvisThanks Avis. Being called a storyteller is what I consider the highest compliment. You and yours have a great day as wellMike
Mike, that is so cute. Thanks for making me smile. Great story.Thanks Laura. I have told that story to few people before. I guess I was waiting for all those aliens to die off so they wouldn't come after me.Mike
Mike,Are you sure you were not drinking before this happened?? Later the Army surely didn't really give you real bulletts for your gun???Jim GriffinNot before, but I promise you I did on Thanksgiving.ThanksMike
hi mike,so that explains it!!there does seem to be a little green tint to your face.do you ever notice any little holes in your head?seriously, what an experience.thanks for a good article,best regards,sueThanks Sue. Your kind words are always appreciated.Mike
Mike, my guess is that these were not only aliens, but also from the future a la Star Trek. They didn't bother bringing you into their ship to participate in any anal probes, simply because they knew who you were and what your destiny was. They didn't want to fiddle with the time stream and mess up your phenomenal success. Aren't you lucky? ;) Great article!Thanks Danny. I promise you if they tried anything near my butt, there would have been a galactic war.Mike
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