Many of the security police officers and most of the Disaster Response Force were now in the parking lot of the Sharpe-Payne grocery store in Damascus. It seemed like a good place to regroup. Colonel Jones knew that injured airmen had just been found at the launch complex — but he couldn’t contact the ambulance, either. Speaking to Colonel Morris over the radio, Jones suggested that the injured should be brought to the grocery store.
Captain Short was furious that everyone had left the PTS crews at the site, that the ambulance and the security police were nowhere to be seen. Devlin was in great pain. He kept yelling for water, saying his skin was on fire. Devlin’s friends cut the RFHCO suit off him and tried to ease the pain. They didn’t have any painkillers or a medical kit. They emptied a cooler and covered Devlin in water and ice.
“Well, at least I’ve still got the hair on my arms,” Sergeant James said to Childers, “but what’s my face look like?”
Childers thought it wasn’t looking too good. It was burned so badly that most of the skin had peeled away.
Fed up with waiting, Major Wallace said the men should be taken to the nearest hospital. Almost half an hour had passed since the explosion. The injured were placed into a station wagon, a pickup, and a large ton-and-a-half PTS truck. They headed for Damascus.
As the trucks sped south on Highway 65, they passed the ambulance, which was heading north. The PTS truck carrying Devlin and Hukle turned around and drove back to the access road so that a doctor could determine how badly they’d been hurt. Sandaker, driving the pickup, just kept going.
Hukle was put on a stretcher next to the ambulance, and Devlin was examined while lying in the back of the truck. Dr. Mueller thought the injuries didn’t look too serious. But the diagnosis didn’t satisfy Childers or the members of PTS Team B. They took the station wagon and the PTS truck, departed for the hospital in Conway, about twenty-five miles to the south — and, amid the confusion, left Hukle on the stretcher beside the ambulance.
Near the town of Greenbrier, about ten miles south of Damascus, Sandaker spotted a couple of security police officers. He stopped the pickup and left two injured men — Hanson and Archie James — with the officers. Then Sandaker did a U-turn and drove north. He wanted to get back to the missile site.
The hospital in Conway refused to admit the injured men, claiming that it lacked the authority to treat Air Force personnel. Childers demanded that they be treated and took full responsibility for their care. On the way to the hospital, while sitting in the backseat of the station wagon, Joseph Tallman — the PTS technician who’d carried Hukle from the field — had gone into shock. The refusal to admit these injured young airmen, at four in the morning, about half an hour away from another hospital, seemed in keeping with the spirit of the entire night. The hospital finally agreed to treat them, and Childers called the command post in Little Rock to say where they were.
A few hours earlier, at about one in the morning, after escorting a flatbed truck with light-all units to Launch Complex 374-7, Jimmy Roberts and Don Green had asked if there was anything else they could do to help. They were security police officers with a pickup truck. Devlin and Hukle had not yet broken into the complex with crowbars. Everybody was still waiting for instructions from SAC headquarters.
Sergeant Thomas Brocksmith, the commander of the security police at the site, asked Roberts and Green to drive along the roads surrounding the complex and check on the security officers who were manning the roadblocks. Brocksmith wanted to make sure that all the officers knew how to use their gas masks — in case anything went wrong. Roberts and Green got into their truck and drove along the roads surrounding 4–7. They chatted with security officers at the roadblocks, showing them how to use the masks. Most of the officers didn’t know anything about the Titan II or the danger of its propellants.
At about three o’clock, Roberts and Green were on a road about half a mile southwest of the silo.
The sky lit up.
“Man, ain’t that pretty,” Roberts said, not realizing what had just happened.
A moment later the blast wave shook the pickup so hard it almost went off the road. Roberts and Green quickly put on their gas masks. They had a clear view of the launch complex, and it looked like the fireball extended all the way to Highway 65. They couldn’t reach anybody on the radio and thought that everyone at the complex was dead.
We may be the only two left, Green said.
