2021 theme: RUPTURE

NO RUPTURED SKULL TODAY Captain Bill Collier Concord Naval Weapons Depot, Concord, CA As a young man, I attended U S Navy Flight School and became a helicopter for the United States Marine Corps. After Vietnam, I left active duty and decided to experiment with civilian helicopter lying. In 1974 I worked out of Stockton Airport, California for a small operator named CALICOPTERS. The company won a contract to spread synthetic fertilizer on the grounds of the Concord Naval Weapons Depot about 40 miles to the west. The Navy stored nuclear weapons were stored in underground bunkers on this base, but the surface ground was leased to local cattlemen to graze their herds. This keep the grass down and help prevent grass ires.

I departed Stockton airport in my Alouette III helicopter at irst light.

My support crew had departed an hour earlier, a small parade of vehicles, including a fuel truck, a larger tank truck full of ammonium nitrate synthetic fertilizer and a conveyor belt device on a trailer used to deliver the fertilizer from the bottom of the larger truck to my spreader buckets.

We had briefed to meet at the guard shack at the entry to the base. I lew to the designated rendezvous point but my crew was nowhere to be seen, and I saw nothing resembling a guard shack. I thought I must have misunderstood, so I began a search for them. I followed the road between the small hills onto the base, and started searching. I lew low-level around the base for several minutes. After about ive minutes, I saw a Military Police vehicle following behind me, lights lashing but thought little of it. I did a U-turn and lew to the other end of the base. I the MP vehicle shadowed me, lights still lashing.

Finally I saw what I thought to be the guard shack. It was about twenty by thirty feet, bristling with antennas, and several oicial looking vehicles parked beside it. This must be the guard shack, I’ll land here and ask the MPs if they have seen my crew.

As I shut the helicopter down, the Military Police truck rattled to a halt in the gravel about 50 feet in front of me. When I walked towards the guard shack, a Marine corporal with a rile in his hands approached me briskly from the MP truck and ordered smartly, “Down in the dirt on your face, now!” I 59