Army veteran, VFW Post 1741 member dies at 82

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.

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.

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“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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