For
those interested in the minutiae of the Roswell case, there has been a
discussion about the roles of the Provost Marshal that involved Major Edwin
Easley and Major Robert Darden. Both men served as Provost Marshal at the
Roswell Army Air Field. The trouble is who had what authority at what is
considered the Impact Site in July 1947, where a major component of the alien
craft and the bodies of the flight crew were found.
Although,
the documentation that I reviewed, suggested that Easley was the Provost
Marshal when Don Schmitt and I interviewed Sheridan Cavitt, he mentioned that Darden
was the Provost Marshal. I believe that was the first time that Darden’s name
had come up with us. We checked out Darden, and Easley told me that Darden had
become the Provost Marshal in 1948. Both men had a connection to that office.
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| Sheridan Cavitt in 1990. Photo by Kevin Randle |
The problem arose in an interview of former Counterintelligence agent, Master Sergeant Lewis “Bill” Rickett conducted by Dr. Mark Rodeghier of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. Although Don Schmitt conducted more interviews with Rickett than any other researcher, Fran Ridge used Rodeghier’s January 1990 interview for the basis of his analysis.
Rickett
tells Rodeghier that Cavitt wanted to show him, Rickett, something. They drive
about forty-five minutes outside of Roswell which puts them on a site much
closer than that near Corona where the debris field was located. Ridge wrote:
Rickett
and Cavett arrive near the final impact site and are a short distance down a
hill not far from all the activity. There are four or five military vehicles,
up about a half a mile or so down the road.
Rickett:
What's going on up there?
Cavett
[sic] is silent for a while, staring ahead as he drives onward.
Rickett:
I don't recognize this place.
Cavett:
You'll see. And Darden's even got some of HIS men up there.
Rickett realizes something important is going on. Major Robert Darden is allegedly Chief of Security [assigned to the 390th Air Service Squadron according to some]. So, they drive up to the first checkpoint, which is Maj. Edwin Easley's MPs. The guards look at them and one of them confronts Rickett.
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| Don Schmitt (right) and me (left) on the Impact Site in 2023. |
Rickett:
This is kind of hard to believe. It looks to me like something landed here. But
if it landed here, I don't see any tracks. I don't know how anything could land
here and not leave tracks. The sun is pretty bright. Have you been over there?
Don't you see what I see? Looks like there's..............I guess that's metal.
Rickett
at that time was approximately fifteen to twenty feet from various closer
pieces [of debris].
Rickett:
Is it hot? (radioactive) Can you touch it?
Darden
is shaking his head no to the first question:
Darden:
Yeah, be my guest. That's what I wanted you to ask me. As for the strange
wreckage, it was very similar to that found by Marcel and Cavett on the Foster
ranch; thin, light, and strong.
Rickett
picks up a piece of it, a slightly curved piece of metal, real light. It is
about six inches by twelve or fourteen inches. Very light. Rickett crouches
down and tries to bend it.
Cavett
looks over at Darden and laughs.
Cavett:
Smart guy. He's trying to do what WE couldn't do.
In
Witness to Roswell Tom Carey and Don Schmitt report, based on Schmitt’s
interviews with Rickett, “Rickett picked up a piece of it [metallic debris],
about 4 inches by 10 inches, placed it over his knee, and tried to bend it. He
couldn’t. Cavitt and Easley laughed at him because they had tried and failed at
it too. Rickett had never seen a piece of metal that thin that could not be
bent. “The more I looked at it, I couldn’t image what it was.”
Here’s
where we run into trouble. In July 1947, Easley was the base Provost Marshal.
He was responsible for law enforcement and base security. His subordinate,
Captain Beverly Tripp was the commanding officer of the 1395th MP
Company. The 390th Air Service Squadron, whose area or responsibility
included the Silverplate B-29s, which had been modified to carry the atom bomb.
Those working on the Silverplate required a higher clearance because of that.
In
July 1947, the commanding officer of the 390th was Lieutenant
Colonel Walter Y. Lucas. In July 1947, Darden worked as an air inspector, which
takes him out of the picture.
We
can confirm this by looking at the telephone numbers in the base telephone
directory. In July 1947, Darden’s number was 311 and that number was also found
under the Air Inspectors section, with 311 assigned to the administrative
office. There is nothing there to hint at an association with the 390th
ASS.
We
can follow this train of thought, that is what the telephone numbers can tell
us about the assignments of the men in July 1947. We can track who worked where
because of the phone numbers listed and the buildings to which those numbers
were assigned telling us where they were. All the numbers assigned to the
Provost Marshal’s office are in building 418, the Intelligence Office is
Building 31 and the Air Service Squadron is in building 670. Darden was in
building 81, which is separated from those with security and intelligence.
I
also found an interesting reference to the mission of the 390th in
the August 1947 Unit History. It said:
The
390th Air Service Squadron has been divided the personnel section
into three sub-sections to wit: Payroll and Service Records Section,
Classification Section and Personal Affairs Section. Emphasis has been placed
on a cross-training program so that at least two clerks are qualified to handle
each job.
There
is nothing to suggest that Darden had any role in July 1947 that would have put
him in charge of security on the impact site. That sort of security would have
fallen to the Provost Marshal and the MP company. While Rickett did mention
Darden in a specific role in 1947, it seems that Rickett remembered Darden as a
Provost Marshal but, as noted, Darden didn’t have that job until 1948.
Ridge
relied almost solely on Rodeghier’s interview. But Rodeghier had a comment that
is relevant to the discussion here. Rodeghier, in an email to Tom Carey, Don
Schmitt and me on December 17, 2025, wrote, “In my interview, I let Rickett
speak and didn’t correct him because I wanted to get his story as he would tell
it. Given what I knew at the time I figured that he was wrong about Easley, but
I wanted him to speak freely.”
I’ll
note here, that when Don and I spoke to Sheridan Cavitt in Arizona, he was
quick to ask if we had spoken to the Provost Marshal. He said that the man’s
name was Darden. I believe he was attempting to point us in the wrong
direction. I learned that Darden had been the Provost Marshal in Roswell but not
in July 1947.
Ridge
has, I believe, interpreted points where Rickett mentioned the Provost Marshal that
meant it was Darden. It’s a case of a flawed memory. I know how that happens. I
used to say that I left my Thanksgiving meal on the serving tray in the mess
hall (or Dining Facility in today’s parlance) because, in 1968, the flight had
been scrambled on a mission. But two or three years ago, as I was reading the
letters I had sent home from Vietnam, I discovered, we hadn’t been anywhere
near our mess hall because we had staged near Tay Ninh to assist in a
prisoner’s exchange. We were there in case something had gone wrong. I noted
that we were provided with a promised meal while there and was outraged that we
had to pay for it.
Oh,
don’t get me wrong, we had been scrambled out of the mess hall on several other
occasions and my clearest memory was leaving a tray in the serving line. It
just didn’t happen on Thanksgiving. The point is, Darden was the Provost
Marshal at the base, just not in July 1947. When Ridge writes, “Major Robert
Darden is Chief of Security,” he is wrong about this. Darden probably wasn’t
even on the Impact Site. He was, as noted above, assigned in July 1947 to
Administration as an air inspector and was in a building away from the Provost
Marshal, and the 309th. I find no connection to a law enforcement,
intelligence function, or anything to indicated he was the Chief of Security in
1947. I did find that the Troop Information and Education Officer, the
Recruiting Office, and the Ground Safety and Engineering Officer were in
building 81.
I
found a map of the base. It provides an overview of how the various operations
and functions on the base were grouped. It is not the best map but you can
access that map here:
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| Map of the Roswell Army Air Field (Walker Air Force Base. It is not the best example |
This doesn’t mean we can reject all that Rickett said. The essence the interview is accurate, it’s just that he got one of the names wrong. This is what happens when a theory is built on a single bit of evidence when other bits are out there but ignored. We must review all the evidence to determine how it all fits together. In this case, Rickett does mention Darden as the Provost Marshal, which is correct information, it’s just he wasn’t the Provost Marshal in 1947. Other testimony and documentation proved this.
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