Reporter staff
Elmer Grosbier, an Army veteran who served during the Cold War and was a longtime member of Auburn VFW Post 1741, passed away Aug. 20 from leukemia. He was 82.
A Mass and reception were held Thursday at Holy Family Catholic Church. Services are 1:15 p.m. Friday at Tahoma National Cemetery.
Grosbier, a 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,” Grosbier said in a 2009 Auburn Reporter article. “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, 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.
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