The Salisbury Plain Soldiers

During night manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain, in the winter of 1989 into 1990, a former British soldier known only as Mark described six men encountering a vast triangular craft that threw a strong strobe-like beam. A figure in a black flying suit approached the group holding a rod. A bluish cone of light then engulfed the soldiers and took over their minds, in Mark's account. They woke disoriented some 600 metres off course, with a stretch of time they could not fill.

What is on the record

Three retellings reach the archive, all from a single channel, and each is a version of the one account Mark gives. The account describes six soldiers; the archive resolves two claimants, Mark by name and the five others as an unnamed group. The dating is not precise, spanning the winter of 1989 and 1990.

The entry holds no documents and no film. The testimony rests on a single anonymous voice, retold more than once through the same channel. The man in black and the beam are elements of that account and nothing in the file settles them.

Why it sits where it does

The grade is L3, resting on the six soldiers the account places on the plain during one connected event. Against that the corroboration is thin: one named source, a group of unnamed companions, no records and a single reporting channel. Higher tiers ask for more than this file holds. What passed over the training ground that winter is not resolved here.