Our battalion, The 95th Combat Engineers were on site for the Turk shot. When it went off we were told that it was necessary for us to immediately leave the area and we left when the busses got there. There were teams of people with geiger counters to check us. We were brushed off with brooms as we entered the busses. I suppose that there was some radiation on our uniforms as the fallout cloud appeared to be drifting directly over us. We had no special equipment other than it was very cold and we had on all the cold weather clothing that we had.

We went back the next day and walked toward ground zero until we were told to go back. We passed various types of armored equipment that had been tossed around by the blast and also there were some pieces of the tower mixed in with it. I could identify something that looked like a huge turnbuckle that would have stretched the supporting cables. Also, there were some rabbits that were running around and appeared to be blind and had their fur singed.