In the further saga described in the interview with the anonymous former colonel written by author, Anthony Sanchez, we get more of the original story of what happened deep underground within the Archuletta Mesa near Dulce. Sanchez’s riveting account of what was recounted by the colonel who had been privy to actual US Army records of the events at Dulce paint a mesmerizing picture of intrigue and dread as the tale unravels, and a decades old mystery is revealed.
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In 1940 the Muroc Expedition, essentially a Special Forces unit, departed Muroc Air Field in California setting out for Dulce, New Mexico and the Archuletta Mesa. There the plan was to establish a site for a secret underground base where the data from the secret Manhattan Project could be used to weaponize nuclear test results. Little did this hand-picked group of soldiers, geologists, engineers, and aviators know what it was that lay in wait for them.
Phil Schneider shares his horrendous experiences while in a deep underground encounter near Dulce.
Unearthing of death
After discovering the forensic remains of a deadly firefight that had taken place between the inhabitants of the subterranean complex within Archuletta Mesa and Apaches that had transpired sometime in the 1880’s, and the existence of some type of high tech electronic devices that not only eclipsed anything man was capable of in 1940, these apparatuses were perhaps hundreds of years old! A very enigmatic collection of events and artifacts confronted the soldiers of the Muroc Expedition and their commander, who knew that they had stumbled onto a bizarre find.
On a collision course with fate
After the arrival of a military archeological expert, the commander ordered all artifacts, and forensic evidence that they had encountered so far to be collected, preserved, catalogued, and containerized. From there they would load up the mysterious cargo to be airlifted back to Muroc Air Field. However, in the course of the operation and as the soldiers moved deeper into the subterranean tunnel system a presence was detected.
Strangers in the shadows
The soldiers became aware that they were not alone! As they carried in equipment and lugged out artifacts they were aware that strange beings peered at them from around corners and from the edge of darkness down the long, gloomy corridors of the deep underground tunnel system. The men knew they were being watched. Yet, no special security measures were being taken. In two weeks there had been no incident so far, but things were about to change.
Growing tensions
The expeditionary troops ventured further into the eerie system of caverns recovering more artifacts, but things were changing. The levels of humidity began to increase drastically accompanied by the smells of something like a chemical plant, according to one soldier. The troops were now sweating profusely and finding breathing more difficult the further they pressed into the foreboding labyrinth of underground tunnels. Then something eerie happened! A series of unnerving sounds echoed down the tunnels. These blasts of blood curdling noises came at intervals leading the commanding officer to the conclusion that they were pre-recorded like on a phonograph record and that this was a form of psychological warfare. He conferred with his archivists whose job it was to make handwritten reports of everything that happened being that in 1940 they did not have video cameras or tape recorders to document the events of the underground expedition. They all agreed that the unnerving sounds were of women and children screaming and that these were broadcast down the corridors at regular intervals. Someone or something did not want them going further down into the caverns!
An inevitable confrontation
The commanding officer made a decision to withdraw from the subterranean complex of Archuletta Mesa as some of his men were now becoming agitated while other soldiers had to be taken to the surface due to extreme anxiety. The conditions were beginning to weigh heavily on his men. After finding the evidence of a deadly skirmish that had taken place decades earlier, the commander had decided that discretion was the better part of valor, but it did not end up that way. Though the orders had been issued to pack up and leave two of the men disobeyed orders. Out of curiosity they continued to push deeper inside of the cavernous underground complex, too fixated on solving the mystery to obey their orders. While the troops were packing up to leave, the duo carefully ventured deeper than any had gone so far where the temperature rose, the humidity was even greater, and the smells were pungent.
Opening Pandora’s Box
At last they happened upon a smaller tunnel that they had to carefully traverse. That was when they made contact! A large round opening loomed before them when they peered inside they saw something that frightened them into near hysterics! A large room with a group of semi-humanoid entities of different shapes and sizes were apparently working on research of some kind. The men also saw something that further alarmed them. The entities had visuals of the entire Muroc Expedition’s operations within the caves. The large radar screens on the walls were actually monitoring the men as they worked! They had been watched the whole time since they had arrived!
The two soldiers had drawn their pistols now as they watched! Both decided to get back to their comrades and report what they had seen, but when one of them accidentally dropped his sidearm as they withdrew, the noise alerted the inhabitants. They immediately poured out of the entrance trying to grab the two men! One soldier was hauled down into the room screaming! As his buddy jumped onto the tunnel floor and began to run, he could hear two things!
One thing was the shots being fired from his buddy’s pistol. The other thing the desperate soldier heard was the inhabitants racing behind him as he ran trying to grab him now. The soldier was panic stricken as he sprinted for everything he was worth from the remote cavern toward the rest of the expedition! He fired his hand gun trying to get the attention of his comrades as he ran further, but he and his partner had ventured very far from the deepest penetration that had been allowed by the commander. Still he frantically dashed down the rocky corridor with the eerie inhabitants in hot pursuit. He gasped for breath running with all his might.
The dreaded confrontation
Now he was nearing where the other troops were assembled as they wrapped up the artifacts and prepared to carry them to the surface. He fired his pistol again and screamed. One of the soldiers shot down the darkened tunnel in response nearly hitting him. As he stopped and began breathlessly explaining to his unit what had happened as the angry soldiers demanded to know why he had disobeyed orders, he pointed into the corridor behind him. When the soldiers looked, they saw an oncoming crowd of strange beings rushing toward them. Immediately, the troops grabbed metal tables overturned them and took cover while others locked and loaded their weapons.
The commanding officer ordered his men not to shoot until he ordered them to! Now they gazed into the poorly lit tunnel to see what appeared to be glowing weapons being carried by some of the entities. The sharpshooters there had strapped on their night vision goggles which were probably infrared technology and under the commander’s guidance were told to aim for the weapons as targeting fixes. By the time the commander ordered “Fire!” The subterranean beings were nearly on top of the Muroc Expedition unit. Now the gloomy corridor lit up with muzzle flashes as the soldiers unleashed a hail of bullets upon the inhabitants who now began to blast away with their glowing ray guns!
Some of the inhabitants actually retreated as the soldiers fired into the crowd of inhabitants while others fell from being sprayed with bullets. Soon a few of the entities had penetrated the perimeter defenses of the troops and hand to hand combat took place. The entities were ferocious, trying to torture the soldiers as they fought, but the Muroc Expedition troops were well trained in combat and used their martial art tactics to knock several of the inhabitants down and then shoot them in the head.
A bloody contest is decided
Still the firefight remained vicious with both sides causing casualties upon the other. Some of the men grabbed the glowing ray guns of the fallen inhabitants and began firing upon the entities with their own weapons. The battle lasted for three hours with the inhabitants having absorbed more of the losses and finally retreating back deeper into the caves. The commanding officer did not have his men pursue their enemy however. He ordered the weapons to be confiscated off the dead entities. The soldiers grabbed their dead and wounded to vacate the hot zone. There was one inhabitant that was still alive but wounded. The soldiers attempted to interrogate it with no success. They finally shot it.
In the aftermath
The commander ordered his men to grab some of the lesser damaged bodies of the inhabitants and bag them for airlift back to Muroc Air Field. He knew his superiors would want biological proof of their encounter. Upon communicating with high command, the senior officer ordered his men to capture as much of the devices and evidence as they could one last time before permanently vacating the weird underground world of the Archuletta Mesa. They determined that there would have to be another attack to rid the facility of the last of the inhabitants, but that would be left up to a better equipped force. More importantly Muroc Air Field leaders wanted the glowing weapons used by the underground dwellers as well as the other devices. They also wanted the enemy corpses for biological study.
Analyzing the events at Dulce
Now an after battle assessment would be made of the firefight that had just transpired. The commander discussed the outcome with his officers as the wounded were being loaded along with everything they had gathered from the dreaded subterranean hell that the Muroc Expedition had just escaped from. Those soldiers struck by the glowing weapons of the inhabitants had suffered nasty open wound burns. High command at Muroc had determined that the commanding officer leading his men at Archuletta Mesa had acted with decisive and effective leadership.
Upon evaluation of the battle, Army Air Corps analysts had determined that the Apaches had perhaps been out numbered 10 to 1 yet had fought valiantly causing great losses with some probably escaping. The Army sent personnel into the area to see how much of the events had been recorded and shared among the Jicarilla tribes people, but these natives spoke little of what they knew. Yes, they did have stories that were handed down, sometimes even songs that were sung about great deeds from the past, but they were reluctant to share these with the Army interviewers.
The results meant death to the inhabitants
The inhabitants, it was determined, had been surprised by the long range weaponry of the new generation of latest human technology. They had tried to attack the Muroc Expedition as they had tried to over whelm the Apaches, but had been stunned with the superior firepower by an even better trained military outfit who had outfought them. Even in 1940 the soldiers would have been supplied with BAR’s (Browning Automatic Rifles) 30 caliber Springfield bolt action rifles, devastating 50 caliber Thompson Machine Guns, and the renowned model 1911 officer’s 45 caliber pistol. The venerable M-1 rifle that had won World War II according to General George Patton had probably not yet been issued. The inhabitants even with their glowing ray guns were ill advised to try and swarm the well-armed soldiers who were better equipped and trained than their Apache counterparts some 60 years before.
A lethal harbinger of things to come
In all this, it was discovered years later when, once again, American special-forces and geological engineers entered into another underground firefight, that the subterranean dwellers had learned their lessons well by 1979. Their tactics and weapons had improved and according to whistle blower, Phil Schneider, who would later be assassinated with extreme prejudice, the outcome had proven deadly for the humans. You might recall after the costly encounter in which Phil was nearly fatally wounded, that Special Forces, Green Beret, black operations security, and construction personnel were devastated in the resulting engagement that left many human combatants dead. In the years that followed, Phil Schneider would go on the lecture circuit giving his first-hand account of the grisly results of his encounter with the deadly entities that were prepared for another vengeful round with their human counterparts near Dulce.
There will be more to come in Part V.