Need To Know

In 1991, I was serving in the United States Marine Corps assigned to the Riverine Assault Craft Unit (RAC). We drove small, heavily armed 32-foot Stingray designed boats. They were crewed by four, in support of the Navy’s  Special Boat Units (SBU) and the Navy Seal Teams.  

In October, we received orders. We were going to Mountain Warfare School in Bridgeport, California.  Couple of things immediately struck us as odd. First, if you are familiar with that part of eastern California, you will quickly realize there are no lakes or rivers from which to conduct riverine operations. Second, we weren’t taking our boats.  

Our platoon leaders loaded us into a troop transport plane and we flew to the Naval Air Station in Fallon, Nevada. The only other people we saw on the tarmac upon arrival were some 'suits' exiting a couple of high-end jets. They certainly didn’t look military. Nor did Fallon seem like the type of place marines would land for mountain warfare school. Also, these schools were usually visited by battalion sized units, but here we were, a platoon of forty RAC crewmen.  

We were met by four 5-ton green military transport trucks and two hummers. Once aboard, we were on our way. We drove through some flat lands which quickly turned into winding mountain roads. The last hour those became dirt roads.   

I was in the back of the truck by the rear tailgate and observed a couple of things. One was a sign for the Bridgeport Reservoir that was located to the south, but we turned north. Towards the end of the journey, I saw a sign for Bald Mountain. I remember it distinctly because I could see the mountain in the distance and I thought the name was apt since it had trees only half-way up.  

Finally, we stopped in what looked to be a dirt turnout and were ordered to set up our hooches (tents) in a nearby field. Now to this point, everything could be explained away, but what happened next could not.  

We were issued ammunition for our M-16’s which we always carried and slept with as marines do. But this wasn’t dummy rounds or training rounds. We were given live ammunition. For the next two weeks we were driven to a site about twenty minutes away and ordered to stand guard with our loaded weapons.  

Any questions were met with “above our pay grade” and “need to know” and the standard Marine Corp’s answer “yours is not to reason why but just to do or die.” We simply had orders that nobody was to enter the area we were guarding under any circumstances. 

We were separated into two groups and we worked twelve hour shifts. I was on nights from 7 PM to 7 AM. They brought meals to our posts as we were forbidden to leave. That meant we also used the woods for restroom purposes.  

After the first week, from standing different posts, we jarheads assessed that we were set up in a large circle, covering maybe a two to three square mile radius. You could never see the guy assigned to your immediate right or left, which I thought was odd, although it was dark. 

Here are some key observations I made. Interestingly, I saw the suits I had seen at Fallon driving by on more than one occasion. I also saw an air force general in a flag car. He stopped in our turnout and met with some suits that drove a completely tinted-out gray SUV that bore US Government plates. 

Another thing that didn’t fit was that there were several semi-trucks, all unmarked with black cabs and white trailers, that passed by our biv-whack site daily, traveling in both directions. There is no way those dirt roads were a commercial route.  

Finally, one morning on the ride back from post, I was fortunate enough to get a tailgate seat again. I was just staring out the flap, daydreaming in that tired manner one does after standing post for twelve hours in the woods, when I saw it. Just a glimpse, for a second, but I know what I saw.  

There was a path torn through the trees heading straight into the area we were guarding. By path, I mean about a twenty-foot wide section where the trees were splintered, burnt and uprooted with four long ruts in the ground as far as the eye could see. They ran straight to the area where I had observed a bright array of lights nightly while standing post. Unfortunately, I was too far away to see any details.  

Eventually we were told we were guarding a major plane crash. There is no record of a major plane crash occurring in that area in October of 1991. Besides, we never saw an ambulance, police car, or fire truck the entire time we were there.  

I still have no idea what the government was secretly doing on that mountainside in October of 1991. What I do know is that I have an 8X12 certificate with my name on it for having completed the Mountain Warfare Course at the US Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, California. To this day, I have never stepped foot in Bridgeport, California.