The impact staggered him, the heat swept over him, and the destruction awed him.

Elmer Grosbier will never forget.

He didn’t know it then, but the young Army platoon sergeant was a part of history – a soldier from an artillery outfit who played a small but critical role in the perpetuation of the Cold War through the experimental Atomic Age.

“All I knew was they were going to send me to Las Vegas. (The Army) must have been thinking I was doing a helluva job,” recalled Grosbier, a 77-year-old Auburnite, long since retired from an extensive military career. “But they didn’t tell me the whole story on what we were doing down there.”

Grosbier was one of 2,500 specially-trained GIs who stood in the trenches 5,000 yards from Ground Zero – the actual explosion point – to witness history’s first atomic artillery shell fired at Camp Desert Rock in Frenchman’s Flat, Nev.

The drill was part of Operation Upshot-Knothole, a series of 11 top-secret, atmospheric nuclear test shots conducted in 1953 at the Nevada Proving Ground. On a May morning more than 56 years ago, Grosbier was present for one of the blasts.

He remembers it like it was yesterday.

“They told us we were participants in an ‘atomic exhibition,’ ” said Grosbier, his eyes lighting up. “We were warned that it would be a federal offense if we were caught with a notebook, camera or binoculars.”

The assignment was powerful and compelling.

For Grosbier, such a test confirmed his suspicion that the military was in the business of defending cities, not just battlefields.

Mighty gun

This particular drill would be different. “Amazon Annie” – a 40-foot-long cannon with an 11-inch barrel – was to create quite a stir. After the gun fired the shell seven miles away from its target area, an atomic fireball blossomed and a purplish cloud whitened and rose swiftly into the air.

Grosbier, who was with his artillery gun battalion, had never heard or felt such an impact. He was just 21 years old.

“When it went off, we immediately got up and looked at the blast,” he said. “I was looking at a big, brilliant red sunset before I could see the mushroom (cloud) going up.

“Then 13 seconds after the blast, I was hit by the shock wave. It knocked me backward,” Grosbier said. “I then got hit again … (the implosion) knocked me forward.”

After the explosion, conditions changed. It was surreal for the native Wisconsin who had joined the Army four years earlier and served six months of combat in Korea.

“A terrific wind started to whip up, although I didn’t know if it was the effect of the blast,” Grosbier said. “It was so strong we had to put on a gas mask.”

Grosbier and the soldiers walked within a half-mile of Ground Zero and were actually looking up at the mushroom cloud. They were exposed to levels of radiation and hit by atmospheric fallout in stalactite crystal form from the cloud.

Great effects

In the aftermath, the troops saw the devastation. The backs of trees were scorched. Makeshift props, such as vehicles and heavy equipment, were destroyed, and buildings were demolished in the blast zone. Such items were put in place so that military leaders and scientists could study the effects of such an overwhelming blast.

“I didn’t realize the destructive force,” Grosbier said of the aftermath.

Nor did the troops realize the fallout.

Soldiers were quarantined afterward, checked for radiation exposure and released in time. While Grosbier cannot account for others, he came away without any effects from the radiation. Other men, to the best of his knowledge, were aggressively exposed to radiation but survived and came home.

Radiation exposure and its effects were in the study phases at the time, Grosbier said, and personnel were part of a grand experiment.

According to one report, approximately 3,000 soldiers reached high levels of exposure from the Nevada blasts. Of those, 84 exceeded those levels, but the exposures did not produce observable symptoms, the findings said; they simply increased the lifetime risk of cancer by a small amount.

Grosbier, for one, came away unharmed.

“I was exposed to a lot of radiation, and in a lot of ways I’m grateful to be here. I’m like a cat with nine lives,” he said. “Looking back, I was quite fortunate to have survived it.”

Because such tests were so sensitive and select troops were carefully brought in from different parts of the country, there was little interaction afterward. In ensuing years, there would be no forums or reunions. Nobody talked about it. It was duty served.

“It’s only important when the subject is brought up,” Grosbier said of the ordeal.

With the exception of one man, Grosbier has never shared his experiences with others who might have been assigned to the Nevada desert during that era.

Life goes on

Following the tests, men rejoined their units and carried out their duties elsewhere. Many, like Grosbier, went on to raise families and build successful careers.

Grosbier stayed in the military for 21 years, first specializing in radar and artillery and later, excelling in microwave technology as a signal specialist who served throughout the country and the world.

Detail oriented, disciplined, precise and affable, Grosbier went on to work long and hard in the private sector, fulfilling a 24-year run as a communications technician for Burlington Northern.

He settled down in Auburn with his wife, Ingrid. They raised a daughter, Sandie, who lives today in Lakeland Hills.

An avid fisherman and hunter, Grosbier is a member of the local VFW 1741.

Looking back, Grosbier understands and accepts the significance of such tests that occurred 56 years ago in a Nevada desert.

The Army needed the blasts because they provided technical information vital to weapons design. They prepared the U.S. military for possible atomic combat operations. And they served other purposes.

Fortunately for mankind, Amazon Annie never spoke again. The U.S. never had to use such atomic weaponry.

Which is just fine with Grosbier, who just happened to have a front-row seat to witness the historic fireworks.

He still has newspaper clippings of the event, a reminder of his time and place in military history.

It was only a chapter in his long and productive life.

“There’s nothing I really regret,” he said. “I look at it as a day that happened, and that I went on to bigger and better things.”