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Assassination Witness Felt Bullets “Whiz Right Over My Head” 11/9/2013 1:27:37 AM
Below is a word-for-word reprint of an article which appeared in the Dallas Morning News on July 27, 1978:
"Gordon L. Arnold, a former Dallas soldier, said he was stopped by a man wearing a light-colored suit as he was walking behind a fence on top of the grassy knoll minutes before the assassination. Arnold, now an investigator for the Dallas Department of Consumer Affairs, was not called by the Warren Commission and has not been interviewed by the House Assassinations Committee.
"Arnold said he was moving toward the railroad bridge over the triple underpass to take movie film of the presidential motorcade when 'this guy just walked towards me and said that I shouldn’t be up there.'
"Arnold challenged the man’s authority, he said, and the man 'showed me a badge and said he was with the Secret Service and that he didn’t want anybody up there.'
"Arnold then retreated to the front of the picket fence high up on the knoll just to the west of the pergola on the north side of Elm Street.
"As the Presidential Limousine came down Elm towards the triple underpass, Arnold stood on a mound of fresh dirt and started rolling his film. He said he 'felt' the first shot come from behind him, only inches over his left shoulder, he said. 'I had just gotten out of basic training,' Arnold said, 'In my mind live ammunition was being fired. It was being fired over my head and I hit the dirt.'
"Arnold, then 22, said the first two shots came from behind the fence, 'close enough for me to fall down on my face.' He stayed there for the duration of the shooting. His fence position, under the shade of a tree, may have locked away his story for 15 years as the Warren Commission and later other assassination researchers scanned photographs and movie footage of Dealey Plaza for witnesses to the shooting.
The first two shots that Arnold heard did not come from the Texas School Book Depository Building because 'you wouldn’t hear a whiz go over the top of your head like that.' He said, 'I say a whiz — you didn’t really hear a whiz of a bullet, you hear just like a shock wave. You feel it . . . You feel something and then a report comes right behind it. It’s just like the end of a muzzle blast.'
"He said he heard two shots, 'and then there was a blend. For a single bolt action, he had to have been firing darn good because I don’t think anybody could fire that rapid a bolt action. The next thing I knew someone was kicking my butt and telling me to get up.' Arnold said, 'it was a policeman. And I told him to go jump in the river. And then this other guy - a policeman - comes up with a shotgun and he was crying and that thing was waving back and forth. I said you can have everything I’ve got. Just point it someplace else.'
"Arnold took his film from the canister and threw it to the policeman. 'It wasn’t worth three dollars and something to be shot. All I wanted them to do was to take that blooming picture (film) and get out of there, just let me go. That shotgun and the guy crying over there was enough to unnerve me for anything.'
"Two days later, Arnold was on a plane reporting for duty at Fort Wainwright, Alaska. He hadn’t given police in Dealey Plaza his name and never told his story to authorities, 'because I heard after that there were a lot of people making claims about pictures and stuff and they were dying sort of peculiarly. I just said, well, the devil with it, forget it. Besides, I couldn’t claim my pictures anyway; how did I know what were mine?'”
