Witness of Roswell incident passed away

A witness to the Roswell incident in 1947 recently passed away. Although, witness is probably not entirely correct. Dr Jesse Marcel Jr was only 10 when that weather balloon crashed in that area of New Mexico. Dr Marcel's father was reportedly the first military officer to investigate what was left of that balloon, and he also took home some of the debris that night in July. According to Dr Marcel, his father "woke him up in the middle of the night", and showed him some pieces that he described as "not of this Earth".

I see no reason to doubt that his father actually believed that (given the first, mistaken report), but the rest of the story is less believable. In fact, only when UFO researcher Stanton Friedman approached Dr Marcel in the late '70s, did he come out with his story. Remarkable, he was after all those years able to remember a lot of details, including how the "hieroglyphs" (probably weathered lettering) looked like. Given how memory works, that seems to me unlikely.

Dr Marcel worked in the US Navy and Montana National Guard. He retired as a colonel, but not without doing a tour of duty in Iraq in 2004 when he was 65. That makes him a respectable man, of course. However, as it also happens in conspiracy circles, too much credibility is given to him because of that military career. It seems that if you are in the military, you are beyond criticism on whatever you tell. In the above obituary, it is even mentioned that his work at the veterans hospital lends credibility to his story.

No, it does not. Military members are humans like the rest of us, and can lie or be mistaken. Now it might be probable that he didn't lie, but given his young age and the time that went between the events and him reporting them, I would suspect that his memory fooled him. The rest of the story has been sensationalized by other people, and given too much attention given the lack of facts to begin with.