US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE MUM OVER

     EXERCISE IN DOWNSVILLE

Pottawattamie: Vacationer Perry Lesthz, of Ponona, has recently come forward with a harrowing tale of terror in the small town of Downsville last summer. Lesthz and his family had stopped in the small community of 450 to visit an antique mall and enjoy some root beer at the Frost Top Drive-In Restaurant, owned by Cordell Louis. While waiting at a picnic table for their food, they noticed that a small vibration in the ground caused things to move about over the surface of their table. A slight ringing in their ears was also noted. Timmy, the youngest of the three Lesthz children, pointed at the road where a very strange truck painted in desert camouflage was moving toward them down the town's main street.

     "The truck had no identifiable insignia, and looked like an ersatz troop transport comprised of two or three early model Ford trucks and a large quantity of plywood and wire. The windows of the truck were tinted black and no driver could be seen. The cab seemed to be able to detach form the main body of the truck, which it did each time the thing came to a stop. Then the back part would kind of rush up and ram into the back part and the whole thing would start moving forward again. It was the dumbest looking thing I ever saw." Said the elder Lesthz.

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Sketch by Timmy Lesthz showing an odd militia group facing a highly advanced American aerospace vehicle.
     "Behind it was a more modern kind of thing. My son called it a 'half track', because it had wheels and tank treads both," recalled Dorothy Leshtz, Perry's wife of seventeen years, "I'd never seen anything like it but Timmy said he had built models of them before. He said it was like a World War Two thing. He was pretty excited about it. We just sat there and watched. There were people in the back of it, maybe about six or seven people dressed up like soldiers in tan and brown camouflage with different types of rifles and shotguns. They had weird hats on, like Arabs or something. They were yelling and shouting at the people in the first truck. I don't think they thought the people in that truck knew what they were doing. I don't think they did either. Maybe that window tinting was so dark they couldn't see out, either...or maybe they had just painted the windows black, altogether. I said to Perry, that can't be the Army, can it?"

     "I told her I hoped not. There weren't no flags or white stars or anything. I told her I thought it must be the local militia out on Saturday maneuvers or something, and that maybe we should forget our burgers and just get going. She got kind of scared."

     "I thought they might follow us or something, use us for target practice." Dorothy piped in.

     The Lesthz family stayed at the diner, but cautiously got back into their car. From their vantage they could see a hill to the south which seemed to be a staging area. About twenty different modified cars, trucks, and military surplus vehicles were converging on the hillside, including two very strange tanks. Timmy was able to snap a picture, and although the image is distorted, experts have identified it as a British "Crab" mine-clearing tank. Protruding in front of the tank is a rotor fitted with lengths of chain which slap the ground to detonate mines from a safe distance. The Crab could clear a three meter wide path through a mine field. It would obviously be quite effective against a police line, in addition to its formidable cannon and machine guns.

     Deciding they were in possible danger, Perry started the station wagon and pulled onto the main street. Just then, Timmy shouted and pointed at the sky. Hovering over the assembled hodgepodge of this outdated ragtag militia was the strangest thing any of the Lesthz family had ever seen, or ever hopes to.

     "Timmy saw it first," Perry said, "it was gigantic, just huge, maybe a quarter mile long, and it was made out of some kind of metal, maybe lots of kinds. This thing was sophisticated, nothing these idiots on the ground could have made in their garage with a welder and scrap. It was longer than it was wide and had, like two big balls on the front---like the eyes on a fly. It was kind of white and had one big cone on the back, but it was shaped like a hexagon, with a brilliant white light shining out of it, like Princess' ship at the beginning of Star Wars."

     "I was pissed off, because I used my last picture on that stupid tank. I mean, damn, there's a fucking space ship and I'm out of god damn film."

     "Timmy! Language!" Mrs. Lesthz said of her son's remark.

     "I got out of the car," Perry continued, "Dorothy was screaming, but I wanted a closer look. It kind of turned as it hung there, and them boys on the ground started firing everything they had at it. I got out my binoculars and I saw some writing on the back of the flying ship: 'US Department of Defense TY 7376'. I had Dorothy write it down on a napkin. It didn't do anything, it just kept hovering over the trucks and tanks for a few minutes and then took off right up into the sky. We stood there gawking, but then the waitress at the Frost Top used the intercom to shout at us about not paying our bill, and I guess the sound carried up to the hill. The guys in the trucks started coming towards us, some of them shooting. We beat it out of there. We're not going back next year."

     Subsequent requests for information regarding the incident from the Defense Department and nearby Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska have met with no response. Equally quiet, though far more nervous, are the residents of Downsville.

    





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