MUFONET-BBS GROUP - MUFONET-BBS NETWORK
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GERMANY SIGHTING REPORT
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[NOTE: I received this sighting report recently. It is
provided here with the approval of the author/witness.]


About ten years ago I had a rather unusual experience
that I've never discussed with anyone in much detail even
though I think about it all the time. So, I thought I'd post
my little UFO story here and see what people could make of
things:

In the Fall of 1981 I was a young teen serving as an
Army tank crewman with Alpha Troop 1/10 Cavalry 4th
Mechanized Infantry Division, Ft. Carson Colorado. I was a
gunner aboard an M60A1, the antediluvian predecessor to the
M60A3.

In early September of that year, my unit shipped out for
West Germany as part of the annual Reforger exercises. We
arrived on September 6th, drew our equipment, and headed
straight for the field.

After about three weeks into the exercise my Squadron
took defensive positions around a little village called
Ramrod or Butzbach, I can't remember which. In fact, the two
villages may be very close to each other, I've never checked
a map. (I'm pretty sure it's Ramrod)

Our tanks and M113s were placed in a thick little patch
of forest on the edge of a 1/2 kilometer wide by one or two
kilometer long field of thick green grass amidst slightly
rolling hills. Our gun tubes faced North towards the village
some two kilometers away.

The field itself was surrounded on all sides by thin-
trunked German fir trees with an average height of 90 feet.
A paved, two lane, road ran through my unit's position and
down the middle of the field into the village.

After waiting two uncomfortable days for the British to
attack our positions, my Troop commander decided to let us
take trips to the sportzplatz in the village below for
showers. We hadn't bathed in over a week.

I went in on the second run with most of my platoon,
about twenty guys. It was a cloudy, overcast, mid-morning. I
cannot remember the day or the date. We were riding on a
full canopied 2 1/2 ton truck. I sat at the rear of the
vehicle, near the tailgate, because I liked the view and
didn't smoke. The back-flap had been rolled up and tied
open.

If none of you here have ever ridden on a canopied 2 1/2
ton truck, then understand that it is a jolting, jarring,
noisy, completely deafening experience where all aboard
acquire many bruises and stiff rearends after even the
shortest of drives. Communication is achieved only by
yelling to one another at the very top of your lungs.
Communication with the driver, from the back of the vehicle,
is next to impossible.

But I digress...

As the truck made its way along the road at a 15 to
20mph clip, something moving in the air above the trees to
the East (The directions given here are only for purposes
of orientation) caught my attention. Less than 100 yards
away, just above the treeline, moved what appeared to be a
large (make that DOUBLE large) Glad Bag "rolling" about
through the air as if caught by the wind.

Its speed must have been less than five miles an hour.

Intrigued, I watched as the "bag" loped along
southwards, skirting above the trees, and then chaotically,
haphazardly, curved west towards the open field and began
descending.

Now, this was all very unexciting until I noticed that
the "bag" was changing shape and color.

As it made its westward "turn" and sloppy, rolling,
descent (just as a large, half-inflated, giant, garbage-bag
would if caught in a slipstream at 90 feet), its color
changed from flat green, to flat red, to flat black, to
flat blue and so on. As this was happening, so too did its
baggy, bulky, shape, begin to smooth and flatten the closer
it got to the ground.

Pay special attention to the word -smooth-. It was as if
all turbulence had ceased and every crinkle, every ripple,
every bump, every possible exterior surface distortion that
might be caused by the slightest movement of wind "within"
the "bag", had vanished.

Indeed, it was elongating and flattening to become a
smooth disk.

At an altitude of scarcely twenty feet, all downward
motion suddenly ceased as the "disk" made a precise and
radical maneuver that sent it on a perfect horizontal
glidepath above the field. At this very instant, in reaction
to the sudden and completely artificial maneuver, my Platoon
Sergeant, SFC Venero, said, and I quote him exactly: "What
the f___ -IS- that thing?"

To which I replied "It looks like a garbage bag that
changes color!" (Brilliant words indelibly etched in my
mind. <g>)

I hadn't known he was watching, but he'd seen everything
just as I had.

As the disk then continued to descend again, this time
with a very steady and controlled forward speed of ten
miles an hour or so, my truck crested a hill. Moments
before this "thing" would have landed, my view was blocked
by the hill as we moved downwards towards the bottom.

I did not say a word. I did not scream "STOP THIS
TRUCK!" I did not in anyway try to jump off the moving
vehicle and run like hell to see what it was because I KNEW
I'd be... yelled at by my Sergeant. I was a disciplined
soldier and the thought of being yelled at kept me GLUED to
my seat.

After the UFO disappeared behind the hill, Sgt. Venero
looked at me, blinked his big dull eyes once or twice, then
shrugged his shoulders. "Hmm" he said.

Because the whole event was so very undramatic, because
there was no Close Encounters of the Third Kind theme music
playing, because the truck was rattling and swaying and
bouncing and because I would've looked like a fool,
screaming at all of them to shut up and tell the driver to
stop, I said not a damned thing.

Nada.

Later, when I tried telling others about what I'd seen,
the standard response was the heady "Sure, Conley. Sure."

Sergeant Venero, not the most interesting, thoughtful,
or well read fellow, chalked it up as being "Just one of
those things."

Now, whenever I've told this story to fellow military
people I get the usual "Hey, it was probably just an RPV."

This is a very logical possibility, but I've seen quite
a few remotely piloted vehicles and ALL of them have wings,
ALL of them fly in relatively straight flight paths, ALL of
them change direction with a dip of the WINGS (which, as I
said, this craft did not have) and NONE of them change color
and NONE of them change -SHAPE- in flight. (Forget midget
craft with variable sweep wings. This UFO did not have
wings.)

Because of the noise in the truck, I can't tell you if
the craft made any noise. I will say that I heard nothing.

What I saw just did not appear to be man-made.

Has anyone here ever seen anything like this?

=END=
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