Out of Africa: the airmen at a German base

What was reported

Pete Willsher, a pedal steel guitarist now living in Zimbabwe, told Hind of a night in the early 1970s at an American air base in northern Germany where his band The Muskrats was backing Justin Tubb and promoting Wrangler jeans. At the bar he asked two young airmen whether they had ever encountered a UAP. The blond, blue-eyed one's eyeballs began to shiver and vibrate, his eyes teared, and he drifted into an unrelated monologue as if a switch had been thrown; later he wept. The darker, older airman took Willsher aside and said all American airmen likely to meet such things undergo a very heavy, unpleasant conditioning programme to stop them talking; it had worked poorly on him and there were things that would make one want to commit suicide. He begged Willsher to leave it alone, saying he feared for his life.

What Hind made of it

Hind prints the interview without comment, noting Willsher's long involvement with UAPs and his 1991 Flying Saucer Review interview with the Moody Blues.

In their words

• his eyeballs actually shivered, they vibrated very, very fast and teared over as if he was going to cry

• Everyone has to do it, you just can't get out of it, you have to go through it, and it's very unpleasant.

• Please, please, please, while you're here, leave it alone. We're enjoying your music, but there's no way… I'm in fear of my life

Cross references

• Flying Saucer Review Vol 36 No 2, Summer 1991
• American base in England episode (this issue)

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 19 (January 1999), spread 08-09