Send Us.....More Aliens

Liam Hatfield enlisted in the USMC immediately after he turned 18 in 1941. In basic training, his marksmanship record was exceptional. That gained him the respect of the other Marines, and while they would go out on leave and party wildly, he gained the respect of his officers by remaining on base and helping catch up on kitchen cleaning duties so that the rest of his platoon didn't have to get stuck with it later.

The only time he ever got into trouble was on one Sunday night. He was cleaning up as usual, and in the back of the storeroom he found several slabs of hickory smoked bacon. They had just been shipped in, and the officers had stashed them for their own private reserve of tasty treat. Liam had a thing for bacon.

Sometime between midnight and 0400hrs, he came back to the storeroom. He stole all the bacon-several hundred pounds of it! Slab after slab, he put in the oven, roasted each one until it was soft and greasy. Then he took it out, ate as much as he could, and saved the rest for his friends in the unit.

The officers weren't pleased. They woke up and found their bacon had been boosted, and so Liam was busted. He was on a flight to the most remote outpost in the world by the end of the day: Wake Island.

Wake Island was just a coral atoll halfway between Hawaii and Japan. There was a small hotel, an airstrip, about 500 other Marines, a few fighter planes, and 1000 construction workers. It was paradise to those who wanted to get away. To those who liked action and frivolity, it was Hell. To generals and admirals, it was the Alamo.

On December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, Japanese bombers attacked Wake Island as well. They destroyed the hotel, wrecked the airstrip, blew apart half the planes, and took out the freshwater tower. During the next few weeks, Liam and his friends repelled several Japanese invasion attempts. They fought off one amphibious assault. There were daily bombing raids. One by one the USMC planes were destroyed, and the coastal artillery guns knocked out by Japanese bombardment.

The US Navy wanted to send a relief force with supplies, but after Pearl Harbor, there were only a few ships left. They put together a tiny flotilla of cargo ships with an aircraft carrier, a few cruisers, and some destroyers. The intent was to get supplies to Wake Island before it fell. Before it left, a message was sent from Pearl Harbor. They asked the surviving men at Wake, "What do you need?" Due to distance and damaged equipment, all the world heard was, "Send us....more japs!"

The small navy task force set sail from Pearl Harbor as soon as it could. It took them barely two days to get loaded and fueled up for the rescue mission. They left at night in case Pearl Harbor was being watched by Japanese intelligence. Two days later, Japanese propaganda radio announced that they knew the task force was on its way, and the Japanese Navy was preparing to sink the last American ships. Just another day or so away, the US navy rescue mission turned around and headed back to Pearl Harbor. Wake Island and the men like Liam who were defending it, were abandoned.

Not long after, the Japanese made another amphibious landing. Liam and the other Marines were short on food, water, and ammunition. They were weak, and barely holding on when the Japanese landed. This time the Japanese invaded with thousands more troops. Liam was taken prisoner. For 3 1/2 years he was starved, tortured, and he barely survived until US Marines could come rescue him at the end of the war. He was down to 68lbs in weight.

On December 7th 1951, Liam found himself under attack again. This time reports from citizens In Pennsylvania, western Maryland, and central West Virginia all claimed aliens were landing. The USAF tracked dozens of objects coming into the area from Canada. At first the concern was that it was a first strike of Soviet bombers, but most of the radar contacts stayed together in a wedge formation.

As they got deeper into Appalachia, the formations of unidentified flying objects scattered. They went in all directions. Then, one by one, they descended into the remote hills and hollers. A recent snowstorm had just dumped 14" of snow on the area. Many of the remote country roads were close to impassable even under the best conditions, but this left many areas impenetrable.

Before sunrise, Air Force investigators were on their way to meet with each person who claimed to have seen-what they described as: an alien invasion. Given the lack of road access to most of these areas, it wouldn’t be until two-sometimes three days after the event that any of the investigators met with those who had made the reports.

All of the reports were consistent in their description of the craft, their course, and people were even able to tell investigators exactly where the alien invaders landed.

When the USAF investigators finally got to Liam, they found no signs of aliens. They confirmed with the phone company that a call had been made from Liam's house the night of the invasion. The Sheriff's department confirmed that he had made a report describing the alien craft. The two investigators got out of their car, looked around, and saw no signs of alien spacecraft. All they saw was an old log cabin, an old stone smokehouse, a small barn, a 38 Ford pickup with bullet holes in it, and miscellaneous junk strewn about the snow.

Liam was near the barn. He had a pig or a deer hanging from a tripod and was in the process of butchering it for the smokehouse. His hunting rifle was leaning on a nearby tree. When they asked him, "Where are they?" "What were they like?", he gave a big stretch, pulled on his coveralls, and told them without hesitation: the aliens were tough, required slow cooking or braising, and tasted like bacon.