A Review of Strange Company
I’m a military history buff, so when I heard that there was a book that was recently published about military encounters with UFOs during WWII, I was immediately intrigued. After all, these are two subjects that I’m keenly interested in. Moreover, I don’t recall ever reading a book solely dedicated to the subject of UFO encounters during WWII.
The book is called ‘Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in World War II’ and it’s by Keith Chester and artist and filmmaker who has devoted a considerable portion of his life to research on UFOs.
The book is an ambitious project that attempts to detail the numerous accounts of the phenomena that various military forces observed during WWII in every theater of operation. This includes primarily sightings and observations from the Allied forces and to a lesser degree, observations from the Axis forces.
While I was reading the book, I kind of felt like an intelligence officer, far from the squadrons and units reporting sightings of foo fighters, foo fire, fire balls, strange lights, odd behaving balloons, silver disks and other unexplained phenomena; trying to figure out what the aircrews and ships crews were actually seeing.
Where these objects and lights, secret weapons or aircraft belonging to the Germans or Japanese? Or were they naturally occurring phenomena; or where they something else? Interestingly enough, back then it would seem that the closest most people got to mentioning possible extraterrestrial origins or UFOs is by referring the encounters to “Buck Rogers” type stuff. At least, that’s my impression of how it was viewed during the war. Post war time the words “extraterrestrial” and “UFOs” started becoming a more popular way to describe what they may have seen.
One of the incidents or reports that I find intriguing is found in chapter 13, page 132. It describes a “Report from Military Attache, Ottawa, to Incoming Briefs for General Arnold, US Army Air Force, 21 January 1945, NARA”, (The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration).
The report according to the book, describes it thus: “On Jan 18, the Western Air Command RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) reported a baffling sighting. According to Captain Parker BCMR (British-Canadian Military Reserves), he was at Oyster River near Vancouver Island and the Campbell River, when he spotted a ‘large silvery cylinder or balloon.’ It was flying at around fifteen to twenty thousand feet. He watched as it floated past Mt. Alexander and ‘appeared to discharge another balloon or object which dropped for about a minute and then enlarged itself. The first balloon or object continued south while the second balloon or object moved west and could still be seen at 2359Z time in the area of Butte Lake.’”
Unfortunately, there are a number of inaccuracies in this report.
Firstly, in the entire history of the Canadian Army, the term ‘British-Canadian Military Reserves’ has never been used. The army reserves in Canada were known as the Non-Permanent Active Militia or more frequently, simply ‘the Militia’. That term covers a great number of units and they were and are usually referred to by their unit name. I wracked my brain for who had the initials ‘BCMR’ and remembered that the British Columbia Dragoons used to be known as the British Columbia Mounted Rifles until 1929; and in 1944 they were deployed to Italy as the 9th Canadian Armoured Regiment (BCD). So, it couldn’t have been anyone from that regiment.
The second confusing part is the location: ‘ Oyster River near Vancouver Island and the Campbell River’. Well, there is a Campbell River and there is a town called Campbell River and there is an Oyster River and they are all located on Vancouver Island, not ‘near Vancouver Island’.
The third part that was confusing and inaccurate is the mention of Mt. Alexander and Butte Lake. Neither of those places or features exists on Vancouver Island. A mountain known as Alexandra Peak and a Buttle Lake do however exist.
Looking at a map, I discovered that if one assumes that it was really Alexandra Peak, Buttle Lake, and the Oyster River, located on Vancouver Island that was meant in the report then the general area of the alleged sighting would make sense.
Speaking of which, I wondered why a soldier would be in that general area in 1945 in the first place. According to the Library and Archives Canada, from 1942-1955 there was an artillery range located in the Oyster River, area. I haven’t seen a map so I couldn’t say precisely where it was located. But that would perhaps solve that part of the mystery as to why the Captain was there in the first place.
Given that there are so many errors in this particular report it does lead me to wonder what else is inaccurate in Strange Company. I do not know how much fact checking Chester put into this work but it would seem to me that the emphasis was on compiling possible accounts with unexplained phenomenon; which is a pity because perhaps a clearer picture of military encounters with UFOs during WWII could have been made by eliminating dubious and inaccurate reports and sightings.
