Mom clipped the front page from the Las Vegas newspaper, and sent it home, to share the news about the a-bomb blast my dad had been in. 
This links to part of what she wrote in her letter home, two days later…
https://wp.me/p4LBtj-j8
Here’s a PDF of the whole newspaper (large, detailed file).
pats_blast
Enter a caption
Camp Desert Rock, outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. (public domain photo from wikipedia)
I heard the newscast at 7:30 that morning that said, first thing, that all the troops were safe.
On March 17, 1953, Mom did not attend that atomic blast in Nevada, where our dad (Thorgel) was stationed at Camp Desert Rock. Here’s content from the letter she write to her sister about that day:
Thursday, March 19, 1953
Dear Marion and all:
We received your nice and most welcome letter today, and it was quite a coincidence, your telling about Marilyn Gulberg saying that she saw Thorgel in the trench at the atom bomb explosion, because it is very likely that she did. He was one of the company that occupied the forward trenches—in fact, only one trench was closer to the explosion than his. It must have been a terrific thing—he was sort of crouched down, trying to support himself against the side of the trench, and after the explosion he said the earth just rocked underneath him, so that he had the sensation of being in a boat with high waves rocking it from one side to the other. They felt a tremendous blast of heat, and scorching hot sand sifted in on them. A lot of fellows were right down in the bottom of the trench, but Thorgel said he thought if the trench caved in on them from the force of the explosion, he didn’t want to be right where it would cover him completely, so he merely assumed a crouching stance. The back of his neck was sore, and looked as if he’d been exposed to a bad sunburn, which was actually about what happened. I was surely apprehensive, until after I heard the newscast at 7:30 that morning that said, first thing, that all the troops were safe.
[Mom doesn’t write this here, but I remember Thorgel telling _me_ many years later that the flash was so bright he could see the skeleton of the guy standing in front of him, almost like a muted x-ray.]
My own part as a watcher didn’t amount to much, for the following reason: I’d been up almost all night, off and on, with Kathy, who had been coughing and very restless. I was up at a quarter of five and turned off my alarm, so that it wouldn’t wake her, because she was finally asleep, and I guess that I was so exhausted I fell asleep myself—when I woke up it was past time for the blast, and I was _so_ disgusted, especially as I knew Thorgel would be anxiously waiting to hear what we saw and heard from here. However, Mrs. Pruter was just going outside as the explosion went off and she said it was not so terribly loud; she didn’t think it was as loud as last year’s. However, I understand that there will be other blasts soon, perhaps bigger than the one that the news and TV cameras photographed, and I am certainly going to be awake then, if I have to stay up all night. When they shoot the atomic cannon, as they say in the paper may be May 2nd, I want to hear what I can of it.
Thorgel was surely tired and hungry when he got home. He had had his breakfast at 11:00 p.m. the night before the blast, and no sleep at all that night, as they had to assemble in the trucks, etc., and drive about 50 miles from Desert Rock to the area where the explosion took place. They had to have formation there, or whatever they call it, about 3:30, and have everything in readiness for any last minute instructions. He got home about 2 in the afternoon of the 17th, and had something to eat and went to bed, just about exhausted. All of the men were tested for the radiation they were exposed to, and Thorgel and most of them tested 1.5—it seems as if they had tested as much as 3, they would have been hospitalized, or otherwise treated for it.
Things here in Vegas have certainly been jumping the day or so before the blast, as you can imagine. I think everybody kind of heaved a sigh of relief when it was over.
Today we are having another awful dust and wind storm. I’ll be glad when it is over. Kathy and I haven’t been out for two days, and I won’t let her out until it is all over.
[She goes on with more, but this is all that related to the atomic blast, in this letter.]
In 1953, parents and my older sister went to live in Las Vegas, when my dad was stationed at the nuclear testing facilities. At the beginning of the year, they hadn’t yet found out what his next orders were to be. Not long before, Thorgel had returned to the USA, after serving two years in Korea.
These are PDF files viewable in Acrobat and probably in most browsers, as well.
Here are the first two letters mom sent home to her sister, who saved them for 50 years.
JANUARY 2, 1953: 1953_ltr_01_02_5pp
JANUARY 8, 1953: 1953_ltr_01_08_2pp
This image is in the public domain, at wikipedia, under Upshot Knothole Encore.
On Friday, both Kathy and I got up at 4:30, when Thorgel’s alarm went off, and we both stayed up. On the way up the mountain, we could feel it getting chillier, and when we finally got way up on the top, we found about a dozen cars parked, and we got Kathy into her snowsuit, and we donned headscarves, and walked on the footpath to the clearing on top from where we could see the blast. We were up there about 8:00, and all we knew was that it was scheduled any time between 8:00 and 8:30.
< They were on Mt. Charleston. Mom and Kat’n were with mom’s friend Joan, who had a car. Ours was at the Army base. >
We could see a few planes circling around, and the atmosphere was quite tense. We had on dark glasses, and just at 8:30 there was a terrific flash of light, and we could see a big red ball to the west, over Frenchmen’s Flats, and along beside it what looked to me like a dozen rocket flashes (I found out later they were a sort of rocket sent up at the same time to measure the height of the bomb), and then the immense white cloud rose up and mushroomed out, and it was slowly turned into rose and peach and pink, and it was about the most awe-inspiring thing I shall ever see, I think.
There was a tremendous column of dust and smoke that rose up, after it, the stem of the mushroom, and it looked as if the whole area around the flats was covered with dust. Thorgel was viewing it from the viewpoint near the area, and he said it was as if the floor of the flats had been churned into a boiling mass. They saw a big Butler building way up, tossed up into the cloud, and other things flying about. From where they were, it felt as if a hot oven suddenly opened, and they could hardly get their breath for a minute or two.
It was about four or five minutes later when we heard the sound of the blast, sort of echoing around the mountain. Then, the top of the cloud separated from the stem, and started moving along in the wind, and even though it was nearly all white, we could see where it was red with fire inside.
There wasn’t much of an ice cap on this one, probably, Thorgel said, because it was such an enormous force to this one that it was too hot for the ice to form. According to the paper, this was about 1½ to 2 times larger than any blast set off in the continental US. I guess we picked the best one to watch.
< My older sister, Kathleen, was not quite three years old when this event took place. >
Today Kathy got a piece of paper, and an envelope, and told me, “I believe I’ll write a letter to Marion and Art, and tell them that I saw the blast.” Then she marked on the paper, crumpled it up, thrust it in the envelope, licked it, and stuck on some of those gold bond stamps, fore and aft of the envelope, and Thorgel had her take it out and lay it on top of the picket fence, near the mail box. So Marion must write that she got the letter, as Kathy is sure the mailman will pick it up.
—–
This is the link to a government film made on that day, now archived at the Library of Congress:
http://stream.media.loc.gov/blogs/navcc/HouseMiddle_v1_768x432_800.mp4
Things mom saved. 